


Zayn at the Farm

by FromFanToStan



Category: One Direction (Band), zayn malik - Fandom
Genre: ARGH, Because Zarry have issues, Because of Reasons, But Not For a Long Time, Eventual Zarry, F/M, Gen, Heavy Angst, Increasingly Bisexual Zayn, Like don't hold your breath slow burn, M/M, Not Ziam sorry, Post-Canon, Quiet, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Zayn at the Farm AU, but zarry is coming, really slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-10-12 08:35:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 33,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20561369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FromFanToStan/pseuds/FromFanToStan
Summary: Zayn is living on the farm in Pennsylvania when he finds he has to confront his past. It's a little bit friendship goals, a little bit Zayn healing and maturing, and a little bit Zarry, but patience is required because these idiots have Issues.I owe a great debt to @HeartoftheSunrise and her limited series Animal Husbandry for inspiration for this 'verse. I like to think that in real life Zayn has left the cities behind and is now living a contented and calm life on the Pennsylvania farm that, technically, belongs to Gigi.





	1. Zayn, Alone at the Farm

**Author's Note:**

> If you’ve come for Ziam or non-platonic Zouis, this will be severely disappointing. I write Zarry exclusively, and Zarry is always end game in these parts.

Zayn steps out onto his porch in the pinking pre-dawn, breathing the scents of green and dew and animals, content in what he sees. He finds in his farm much of the same joy he finds in music and, surprisingly, some of the same natural ability. He knows that in this he is blessed, and today in very early summer he feels gratitude. It’s warm enough that he no longer needs his fleece slippers to stand on the porch, cool enough that he still needs socks and his flannel pj bottoms, so perfect. Stitch’s tags jingle as he trots back up from his morning pee, and Zayn reaches down to scratch behind his ears. He is such a good little companion, all he needs some days. Stitch settles with a little grunt and a sigh, and Zayn sips from his coffee.

His part-time helper Connor will be here soon; it’s Saturday, and he doesn’t have school. They have a full day’s work planned. It’s finally warm enough to put out the tomato seedlings from the greenhouse, and Zayn has purchased some starter peas and beans from the farmer’s market in West Mifflin. They prepped the field last weekend, and now they’ll plant for most of the morning. Then they will mix compost and dirt for the strawberry barrels Zayn has wanted to put out ever since he came here, for the particular variety he’s started in the small greenhouse Connor helped him build in the spring, a variety his neighbor Sarah says is too small to bother with but that Zayn finds delicious. He first ate them at a market in New York City, and the grower there had given him some seedlings when he said he was moving to the farm, with instructions to treat them carefully like the beauties they were. Connor doesn’t argue with Zayn’s choices. He has been lucky in this as well, in finding a local boy who is willing to work every day after school and all day on Saturday. 

Connor is a hard worker, quiet unless there’s a reason to speak, and most days they work alongside each other in silence. Sometimes Zayn has to clear his throat to to say something, and he will realize that he hasn’t used his voice all day. If sometimes the looks Connor gives him are too much like the stares he got from fans in Meet and Greets, Zayn ought to know how to discourage those without being mean. They were all taught that much. The only remnant of his fame is that Connor has signed a non-disclosure agreement, something Zayn is sure he didn’t need to do but that Zayn’s lawyer was sure he did.

Niall is coming soon. He’s promised to help Zayn install the equipment in the home studio that he has converted from a freestanding garage. His hope is that they’ll play a bit together, maybe some of the old songs but also some of Niall’s new music, which Zayn likes more than he expected to, and some of the song bits that he has been toying with. He respects Niall’s musicality and thinks it’s high time he let someone else hear what he’s been writing. Niall will be a thoughtful listener but if asked will say what he thinks, which is something Zayn appreciates. Niall is like a more diplomatic Louis in that regard. If he let himself, he would miss Louis, so in the way he has developed over time of dealing with those years and what they did to him, he mostly doesn’t think of Louis, doesn’t follow him or anyone who does except for Niall and Liam. He has notifications turned off on all social media, so even with them he mostly doesn’t see anything about the boys who hurt him the most. He’s been away long enough now that he doesn’t know if he has a career left. RCA didn’t renew his contract; he hadn’t expected them to. He let his lawyer handle the termination, trying not to read into it anything more than his own retreat from the public having its natural consequences.

Zayn would have picked Niall up at the airport, but he only has two vehicles, a tractor and a pickup, and he had offered but Niall had, of course, refused. It amuses him to think that he can drive at all, and that this is what he drives, not vintage Jaguars or new Range Rovers like someone he used to know and definitely does not miss. He no longer recognizes much about the self that spent almost five years in a boy band; it was good in so many ways, but he wouldn’t have it back, not at all. He’d like to have his boys back, though, most of them.

The more time passes, the less he remembers about what drove them all apart and the more he sees that they were exhausted and over-stimulated all the time, at their worst all the time, unable to identify what was making them so sick and sad when they had everything, or so everyone around them kept saying. Even the one he can hardly bear to think of was suffering, and he was as natural a pop star as ever was born. If he let himself, he might miss that boy’s naughty grin, or the way he always knew when Zayn was feeling awkward and would be sure to do something even more awkward to make him laugh or divert attention. They always understood each other, them. Until they didn’t.

But Niall is coming, and it’s his first visit to the farm, the first of any of them. In his honor, Connor and Zayn have rolled out their version of the red carpet, meaning they have painted the horse barn, red, of course, and Zayn feels lucky to be alive after that experience, and then Connor had, in his quiet way, talked Zayn into having the house and trim painted by actual house painters. Privately Zayn thinks that these new and better versions of the two buildings just make everything else on the property look shabby, but Connor is so pleased, grinning every time he drives up in the weeks since they finished, that Zayn shrugs to himself and imagines that next fall, between all the end-of-harvest work and the first snow, they will hire a big crew to make repairs and paint and generally make the farm properties as beautiful as the farm itself. And in any event Niall is not going to notice.

Zayn has had his cleaning lady twice, first for the things that Zayn has never done--taking down and washing the curtains, steam cleaning the sofa and chairs, waxing the hardwood floors, taking everything off kitchen shelves and putting in bright melon-colored shelf paper that contrasts nicely with the white-painted cabinets--and then for her regular day of laundry, floors, dusting, cleaning the bathrooms. When she did the heavy work, she brought her teenage daughter, and all through those two days Zayn could hear their laughter and excited Spanish as he walked the property doing chores.

His cleaner is Lilia, and she got so excited about Zayn having company that she asked him to give her $2000 to go shopping for handmade quilts--they were, after all, not far from Pennsylvania Dutch country--one for the double bed in Zayn’s room, and one for the single in what will be Niall’s. “Mr. Zayn, it’s so exciting tha’ your fren’ is coming to see you! Discúlpeme, pero sometimes I worry cos you are too solo, a handsome man like you!” Her eyes widen behind her thick glasses, and then she blushes, realizing what she has said.

Zayn just hugs her. It’s been more than a bit since anyone has called him handsome, at least not out loud. Called him anything. Called him, for that matter. It’s nice. She’s a bargain hunter, and when he sees what she purchases for $2000--"I don’ wan’ you think I sheet you, here’s the receta, Mr. Zayn!"--he wishes that he had turned more over to her, and sooner. He would have her daily, but he treasures his solitude so. But maybe twice a week? And she could do some shopping and cooking maybe? He suggests as much, and she beams at him, so he knows he’s asked the right question. They agree on a salary that is lower than Zayn would like to pay but higher than Lilia thinks is fair. She looks at him reproachfully as she finally agrees, saying, “Mr. Zayn, we wan’ you stay here, so you can’ be jus throwing your money at everytin.'” conveniently forgetting that she just had him throw a considerable sum at handmade quilts. He doesn’t mind, though. The Zayn who came to the farm two years ago wanted only to be left alone, and today he still does, but not as often, for not as long, and not by everyone. He is much healed, he thinks.

There is the small matter of the farm itself, or rather its ownership. He has battled jealousy that Gigi has moved on, if the tabloids are accurate, but he knows that now would be a good time to negotiate the sale of the farm to him, now while she is probably feeling a bit guilty at how visibly she is over him; but whenever he thinks about calling her, he is overcome with ennui. It will be awkward all around, and he dreads it, so he puts it out of mind for another day. Anyway, Niall is coming, not today but tomorrow, sometime in the afternoon, depending on if he gets lost on the way from the Pittsburgh airport, and he doesn’t want to spoil his genuine pleasure at seeing him by having an unpleasant conversation beforehand.

Zayn hears the chickens clucking in the hen house, the horses moving restlessly in their stalls, the goats beginning to bleat, all needing to be fed and moved out from the barns. What he loves the most about farm life is its regularity. After so many years lost to constant movement amid a sea of new faces, he loves the slow shifts brought on only by the season and the consistency of his routines. He takes a last sip of his coffee before setting the cup down carelessly on the small wooden table that was on the porch when he moved out here for good, two years ago, sitting as it does in exactly the same place as when he first saw it. He goes inside, noting by the creak of the screen door that he needs to oil the hinges, puts on his oldest, sturdiest jeans and his work boots, a plaid shirt over the white henley he already has on. Connor will be here soon, and he wouldn’t care if he knew that Zayn is wearing the shirt he slept in, nor that he hasn’t combed the hair that has grown so long that he is back to gathering the top half into a ponytail just to keep it out of his eyes. Connor won’t care that he hasn’t shaved. He’ll look at Zayn appreciatively when he thinks Zayn isn’t looking, and though Zayn would never allow himself to think of a seventeen-year-old in that way, he admits to himself that he might miss being desired, just a little.

Niall is coming, and maybe they will talk a bit about those days of being desired, and about what they are both doing now, which is so different from what was expected of either of them. They will not, however, talk about Him. Connor’s newish F150 pulls up the drive, and as Zayn steps off the porch to meet him he reminds himself that hard work will dispel the anxiety that he feels bubbling up at the prospect of seeing his friend after so long and that anyway it is Niall, easygoing, affectionate Niall, the only one who stayed in touch even when Zayn didn’t want to be kept in touch with. Niall is so much more stubborn than he appears. In this too Zayn has been blessed.


	2. Niall at the Farm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Niall intends to stay a week and instead stays for two. They fall back into the easy relationship they had in the band--undemanding, close enough but not too close, enjoying the things they both enjoyed. Zayn plays his bits and bobs of songs, and with Niall’s help fleshes one out, talks seriously about maybe turning it into a single. Not too easy these days since Zayn has no representation._
> 
> _ “Naw, but really Zee, you should talk to Hazza,” Niall tells him, red-faced after working outside all afternoon and drinking probably a six pack since coming in. “He has the connections. He’d love to help you.”_
> 
> Zayn is willing to integrate his new life and his old--but not that one part of it.

It’s 8:30 pm. Niall is late. There was a time, before the farm, when Zayn was late all the time and could never mind anyone else’s tardiness, but that was then, and this is now. He stays on a strict schedule with the animals and the chores of a working farm--he has a working farm!--and he’s never late anymore. His habits are disgustingly healthy, he thinks, as he inhales deeply on the blunt he had to dig out of a carved wooden box Gigi gave him a few years back, and which was hidden underneath approximately twelve plaid shirts, almost exactly alike, that constitute his usual wear. Most stylish British musician. Best dressed 2017. If they could see him now.

So he’s getting high, for the first time in a while. He doesn’t smoke cigarettes anymore. His mum finally talked him into quitting, and anyway physical labor requires a certain amount of wind, and he has recently hired a vocal coach from Pittsburgh who comes to him every Wednesday evening around sundown and then stays over, which at first was weird but now seems just part of his life, and she was adamant about the damage he was doing to his instrument (“Your instrument, Zayn! God gave you such a range and vocal quality, and you spit on Him with your smoking!” Hedda was so _ dramatic _ .) She’s only been coming for a couple of months, but he can tell the difference. The not smoking helps, for one thing, but the vocal instruction coupled with the daily exercises help too. Hedda says by the time she’s through with him he won’t be straining at the top of his register, which has always been a problem for him (“Open larynx, Zayn! Feel how relaxed it is here? Keep it _ that _ relaxed!”) and will gain more control over his runs, which he loves to do but knows sometimes get away from him. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever perform or record, even, again, but he wants to give the same care to his voice that he gives to the goats or the chickens or the horses or Stitch. It’s the least he can do.

But here he is, not used to smoking and coughing repeatedly, and getting high out of pique. Niall had texted him from the airport three hours ago, and he should have gotten to the farm in 45 minutes at most, but here he is, watching the sun go down and thinking gloomily that Niall has probably decided to stop somewhere for the night. He was just ready to see him, is the thing. He texted him after an hour to say, _ hey, are you lost, can I meet you somewhere and guide you in _ , but after fifteen minutes all he heard back was _ I got this mate, cheers _. And clearly, Niall did not have this, and he’s being stupid, so now Zayn is being stupid too. He hasn’t even seen Niall yet, and it’s already stupid. He should never have invited him. Even the prospect of remembering those crazy days has him acting immature.

Finally, it’s 9:30 pm, and if Zayn weren’t so baked he’d get in the truck and go looking for Niall. He worries that he’s driving (“I drive in LA all the time! I’m ambidextrous on driving, mate!”) and maybe he forgot about which side of the road to use, but every time he tries to think about Niall and ditches and calling the police, his mind drifts off again. There’s a little snippet of a song that wants to be born, and he just remembered it. He just wants to pick it out on the guitar, humming, while his phone records it for tomorrow when he’s not stoned and when Niall is here. Where is he, anyway?

He’s just so baked--wow, it’s been a while. He’s not used to it. Zayn eases himself back in the porch rocking chair, grateful for the seat cushions that were his only upgrade to the front porch he first saw some four years ago. He closes his eyes, just for a minute.

The headlights startle him awake; the car itself is soundless. Trust Niall to rent an electric SUV. Huh. Zayn yawns, less buzzed after his nap, and stretches before pushing himself up and toward the steps before he remembers to reach inside the front door to turn on the porch light, then he waits as the headlights dim and Niall steps out. He meets him at the car, in the amber glow coming off his porch. Is it just the lighting, or does Niall look great? He takes a chance.

“Bro! You look great! And alive--I was pretty sure you were in a ditch somewhere. Couldn’t call bein’ dead and all.”

Niall has the good grace to look sheepish. “Ah, bring ‘er in, Zed. I told you I’d be here!” And with that he envelops Zayn in a warm, full body embrace that has Zayn gasping for air at the same time his face splits into his biggest grin. _ Niall _. He was always the best of them, staying out of the squabbles and friendly with everyone, minding his own business but listening to yours if you needed.

It’s been a minute since Zayn had full body contact with anyone, and it feels warm and sort of tender. To his utter embarrassment, Niall pulls away from him, saying, “Whoa! I love you, bro, but not like that!” and he realizes that he has a partial stiffy. He’s never seen Niall as anything but a friend. Damn. He _ has _ been lonely. 

He mutters something, “Sorry, mate, I guess I’m starved for touch out here on me own all the time. I don’t even like you that way….” Niall interrupts him, laughing. “No need to insult a man. Here I was thinking I was finally hot enough for Zayn Malik.” With that he cuffs Zayn on the arm, tells him he looks great too, and turns to get his duffle out of the boot of the car. 

“If I wanted to get with a guy,” Zayn says seriously, once Niall is back beside him under the porch light, “I would want it to be you, Niall. Really.” He bats his eyes at Niall, who laughs at him delightedly. “That’s more like it! I’m starving, mate--are ya feeding me?”

Zayn nods. “Let’s get inside and get some beers and whatever is left from the dinner that’s been warming in the oven for hours.”

And just like that, it’s _ Niall _, and it’s easy, and he doesn’t ask Zayn any questions that Zayn can’t easily answer, and they drink beer after beer until later than Zayn has stayed up in months. When they part at the guest room door, Niall gives him a last hug goodnight. “Fuckin’ hell but it’s good to see you. You’ve grown muscles and everything. You should golf with me!” And at the expression on Zayn’s face, “No--really! It’s a great sport. It’s a sport for people who aren’t sporty.”

“Well, I’m certainly in the right demographic, Nialler. Go to sleep, mate. I’ll be getting you up at dark thirty.” He watches from the door as Niall toddles toward the bed, tugging off trainers and track pants and his top as he goes. _ Niall _.

Maybe it’s all the beer, or the blunt, or maybe it’s the remembering those days when the time between desire and satisfaction was always so short, but Zayn jerks off once he’s in bed himself. His thoughts are hazy: Niall is there, but so are the other boys, they’re on stage, draped over each other, kissing each other’s cheeks, tugging on each other’s nipples. As he orgasms into his own hand, he thinks of another’s, warm, large, and always willing. 

The alarm makes for a rude awakening. Usually Zayn wakes up a few seconds before his own voice singing “Intermission: Flower” gently eases him into the idea of another day’s work at the farm, but today he has a hangover. A raging hangover. Damn the Irishman, anyway. Even back when he was drinking on the daily Niall could put him under the table. It’s 6, though. He has the animals to tend to and Connor coming to help them plan what needs to be done to finish out the home studio insulation, move in all the boxes shipped from New York months ago, and allow him and Niall to start setting up the equipment. He reckons the goats will miss the boxes they’ve been sharing the barn with.

Misery does love company, so after throwing on a clean henley, overalls, and socks, and after dry swallowing three aspirin, Zayn bangs hard on the door of the guest room, the same room Zayn helped Niall into less than five hours ago. “Get up you lazy git! You’re on a farm! We’ve got work!”

Niall can be heard moaning, so Zayn does have that satisfaction. He throws open the door, throws up the shade, and throws off the duvet covering Niall’s half sleeping, half groaning form. “Fuck you, Zayn Malik. You’ve changed, and I hate you now.”

“Time for that later, mate. Up and at ‘em. Connor will be there at 7, so if you want brekkie and your cup of tea along with your shower, you gotta get up now!”

He hears a muttered “fuck” into the pillow and watches in amusement as Niall puts one foot tentatively on the floor. He always was the easiest to wake up, him and Liam. 

As he knew would be the case, Connor likes Niall. Everybody does anyway, and Niall will work, hungover or not. They run ties for the wall hooks to hold the cables so that they snake just under the ceiling; they admire the new electrical box that will allow Zayn to use all the sound equipment without tripping the circuit breaker as he had done numerous times in the house. 

Niall and Connor move all the equipment into the converted garage, shooing Zayn aside, Niall saying, “You’re bigger, mate, but a good wind would still knock you down. He’s a pretty little thing, ain’t he, Connor?” And Zayn gets to watch Connor blush and look away instead of answering. Man. He really does have a crush. He doesn’t even think Connor’s gay. He gets it. It’s just being so close to someone famous. It’s an aphrodisiac. He should know.

Niall intends to stay a week and instead stays for two. They fall back into the easy relationship they had in the band--undemanding, close enough but not too close, enjoying the things they both enjoyed. Zayn plays his bits and bobs of songs, and with Niall’s help fleshes one out, talks seriously about maybe turning it into a single. Not too easy these days since Zayn has no representation.

“Naw, but really Zee, you should talk to Hazza,” Niall tells him, red-faced after working outside all afternoon and drinking probably a six pack since coming in. “He has the connections. He’d love to help you.”

Zayn can’t help it. He stiffens. The smile that had stayed on his face almost permanently for Niall’s visit disappears. He wouldn’t. He would never take help from him, would never want to be in his debt. He knows that Harry feels sorry for him; that’s how little he understands Zayn. All he can say to Niall is “No. That would not be a good idea now or ever. We said and did things that can’t be forgiven.”

“That’s shite, Zee,” Niall responds, and Zayn knows now that Niall is drunker than he appears, because he never pushes a point like this, never makes Zayn uncomfortable or pressured, never has.

“No offense, Nialler, but you’re drunk, and you don’t know what you’re on about. I was there. You weren’t.”

“The fuck you say! I was there. I probably heard way more than you think being as how you and Hazza never did learn to keep your voices down, even at the end when we were all staying as far apart as we could. You’re both full of shite. He’s worse than you are, though.”

Zayn doesn’t know if Niall is mollifying him or speaking what he thinks is true, but his anger dissipates as quickly as it arose at the thought that anyway Harry is worse. The night air is fresh, full of the softness of spring and new blooms. Niall has been nothing but helpful. He lets go of all his feelings about Harry, about those days at the end, visualizes them pushing up from his stomach and out through his open mouth into the waiting night air. The big sky absorbs them all. He will miss Niall’s presence, and he wants his last night to be a good one.

“I know you mean well, Niall. It’s been great with you here. I’m going to be fucking lonely when you’re gone. Will you come back?”

Niall looks at him skeptically. “Really? You’re not going to sulk over me minding your business for at least a couple of years? Who are you, and what did you do with Zayn?”

“That man is gone, I told you. I’m not the same as I was, and good thing innit.”

They both sit back companionably, drinking their beers, looking at the star-filled night sky, and thinking their own thoughts.


	3. Interlude: Zayn, Alone at the Farm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Niall is gone, and Zayn is mostly alone again. In between failing to install an irrigation system and considering doing nice things for schoolchildren, his thoughts turn nostalgic.

For the first few days after Niall leaves, Zayn doesn’t miss him. He’s busy, for one thing. He’s been putting in a sort-of irrigation system so that he can grow peppers and tomatoes away from his longest hose and plant lavender in the half-moon field that sits on the south side of the house, near enough to smell good for its long blooming season. So far his installation consists of laying pipe all afternoon until Connor gets there and then watching Connor correct his mistakes. Still, he has a vision of a sea of lavender around the house, for the smell mostly, but also because he has in mind that he will start making lavender goats’ milk soap and lavender goats’ milk ice cream, and lavender filled pillows and....he’s become obsessed. This is how he got through  _ Icarus Falls _ and why it was so long. Once he started, he couldn’t really stop. There was always one more song.

Then a day comes when Connor has a day off school and finishes laying the pipes, and the fields around the house are tilled up and waiting for slightly warmer weather to put out his delicate lavender starts. For such a sturdy mature plant, the seedlings are delicate as an orchid bloom. Funny, that. So Zayn isn’t busy, three days after Niall leaves, and he finds himself sitting on the porch in the afternoon, with a glass of iced tea, missing cigarettes suddenly, and thinking of the past.

Nostalgia is the most dangerous emotion for Zayn by far. He has a tendency to romanticize the past, and so he tries not to think of it much. When Gigi left the last time, and she texted him a few months later to say,  _ i’m seeing someone _ , he flipped a mental switch and stopped thinking of her. This works well, for the most part, unless something reminds him, like one evening when he was cleaning out drawers to put new liners and little lavender sachets in, he found one of her headbands, and all of a sudden he was in tears on the floor, holding it under his nose to see if it still held a trace of the smell of her shampoo. 

Liam always said that Zayn wore his heart on his sleeve, but it was only because he could never get away from whatever was causing him to have feelings while in the band. There was always some reminder, right there under his nose. He stores such reminders carefully away these days. Maybe they’re wherever he left his love life.

It’s getting hot now, the season changing from still spring to definitely summer, and he’s thinking about installing a ceiling fan on the porch and that maybe he’ll start a program for local elementary students to come out for riding lessons. It’s a shame that Mandarin and Cool rarely get enough exercise. Once in a while Connor will bring a friend and take the horses out for a hard gallop, but unless they do it the horses don’t get ridden nearly enough. Zayn’s idea of riding is to saddle Mandarin up, because she is the gentler of the two, and walk her out to the bean fields. It’s hardly worth the bother of putting on her gear since nothing is very far on the farm and anyway he has his bike. So he’s just thinking vaguely about having kids out once a week to ride horses, and installing a fan on the porch, and that maybe he needs another ice cube for his tea, when suddenly Niall’s laugh seems to echo around him on the porch, and he misses him terribly.

He didn’t know. Zayn never knows. For someone generally sweet, who has been famous and is very good-looking, it’s not vain to admit it since he’s heard it so much all his life, he still never understands that what he does can affect someone else so deeply that they don’t forgive him. He  _ should _ know this. He feels it, this resentment that won’t go away and that time doesn’t cure, but when he’s on the receiving end it’s as though he’s turned off a faucet and instead of the water cutting off it sprays all over him. It’s just unexpected , isn’t it? He never thought that he and Louis would stop being friends. He never thought that he was hurting the other boys so much that it would break them apart. He tells himself that Harry was going anyway, they’d both said so for months, and Harry had had the Azoffs whispering in his ear for ages. Harry had no right to be so mad. And so instead of thinking of Harry, who makes Zayn feel nostalgic in ways he doesn’t want to understand, he thinks instead of Niall, of how lovely it was to have his cheerful presence around.

It’s no surprise that Niall has forgiven him. Niall loved him least. And because he can’t bear to think of the two whom he loved most, he gets up, takes his iced tea glass in to the kitchen sink, careful not to turn on the water because who knows on a day like today, and then he gets his bike out, climbs on it, and rides and rides.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading this quiet little fic. I know not much is going on, unless you like to think of Zayn working his farm. (I do.) But it will pick up soon. Liam and Louis are coming out. That sounds like fun.
> 
> Usual disclaimers.


	4. Interlude II: Zayn in the City

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zayn is in the city, and he’s sold his apartment for a little more than he bought it for, which means that after taxes and fees and the realtor’s commission he will have lost about what he’s put in in mortgage payments. It’ll be good to be rid of it even so, to be rid of all the city properties that belonged to a pop star, not the person he is today nor the person he wants to be tomorrow.
> 
> He’s on his way to meet Gigi. He wants to buy the farm from her, along with everything on it. He doesn’t think she cares, but it doesn’t mean she’ll be inclined to give him what he wants.

It’s been months since Zayn was in New York, and now he doesn’t know how he lived here. It’s smelly and noisy and filled with people who think where they are going is important. Worse, it has no rhythm. Everything stops and starts and jumps and freezes in no discernible pattern. He misses the farm.

Lilia has asked him to pick up some things from her apartment in Pittsburgh on his way back home tomorrow. She’s afraid to go back since ICE raided the chicken processing plant where her husband worked. She doesn’t know where he is and when she might know. She’s staying in the house, and he’s fast tracked the cottage he had been planning to build for a full-time employee once Connor graduates from high school and isn’t available anymore. 

“Mr. Zayn, I hate to ask becass you are so berry good to me, all the time, but I canna go back to the apartment. Me and Susana gonna fine someting out here--” 

He had stopped her, and without even thinking about it, on impulse, he had said  _ no, you are coming here, bring whatever you have, I’m going to build a place for you, you can live on the farm _ , and then Lilia started crying, and then Zayn started crying too, because it is, in fact, the first generous thing he has done in ages. 

It’s good, he thinks, to discover he still has a heart. It doesn’t surprise him to observe that it comes from the Pakistani in him, the outsider who knows what persecution feels like.

So Lilia and Susana are at the farm, and they are taking care of the animals and doing what they can with the crops, because Susana is out of school. Zayn and Lilia talk on the phone at night. Susana and Connor are getting along well, Lilia says. “Ees ok, becass I know tha boy is gay, Mr. Zayn, he’s in love wit you. He not gonna try someting with mi hija.” He smiles through the phone. Lilia’s perceptiveness is acute, even if he thinks privately that she’s wrong about Connor and might have more to worry about that she realizes from her lively, long-haired daughter. 

He doesn’t know what he’ll do when he goes back, since it will be at least three months before the cottage is completed, but it’ll be okay, they’ll live with him in the house, there’s another bedroom that can be cleaned out and set up when he gets around to it. He’ll make it work.

Meanwhile, he’s in the city, and he’s sold his apartment for a little more than he bought it for, which means that after taxes and fees and the realtor’s commission he will have lost about what he’s put in in mortgage payments. It’ll be good to be rid of it even so, to be rid of all the city properties that belonged to a pop star, not the person he is today nor the person he wants to be tomorrow.

He’s on his way to meet Gigi. He wants to buy the farm from her, along with everything on it. He doesn’t think she cares, but it doesn’t mean she’ll be inclined to give him what he wants. 

He goes in the tiny coffee shop midway between their two apartments, where they would meet whenever they had anything important to discuss. They had always needed neutral ground, him and Gigi. She is stubborn and used to getting her way, and their many break ups attest to how much she and Zayn are alike. He’s softer now, but maybe not with her.

She’s already sitting at a table, flat white in front of her, on her phone, looking beautiful but...different? Like she’s had some subtle work done, maybe. Her hair is down, the way he likes it, and it reminds him of the good times, the weeks when they didn’t leave the apartment, just got high and had lots of sex, long, languid sessions of it. He misses her body and her lack of inhibitions. She looks up, eyes him up and down speculatively.

“You look good. Like, big, almost. Do you have a trainer?”

Zayn has to laugh at that. “Yeah. It’s called doing physical labor every day.”

Gigi rolls her eyes. “Do you want coffee? Or...anything, a scone?”

“Nah, I’m good. We don’t have to talk long.”

“Are you still mad about Tyler?”

“Nah, Gigi. We weren’t together. I just...I sort of expected you to take care of me, like you were going to make me your life’s work. It was disrespectful, and if he’s supportive of you, then I think it’s good.” He looks up at her, pretty sure he means every word.

Her look softens slightly. She hesitates: “I was an asshole, too, Zayn. We were good for a while, but then we weren’t. It’s alright; it happens. Are you really completely out at the farm now?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve signed the papers for the apartment. No ties. Speaking of that…”

“I talked to Mom about it, for a long time. I thought about leasing the place to you, since you’ve been out there rent-free, but she’s been by, and she says you’re really working on the place, like making something of it. She’s seen lots of activity, more tilled fields--it seems like you love it.”

“I do. I’m better there than here. Way better.”

“It shows, babe. You look peaceful. And we’ll let the lawyers work out the sale, ok? But, like, what about your love life?” 

Now it is Zayn who hesitates, because this is the Gigi he knows and mistrusts, the one who never asks a question without at least two good reasons for it. “What about it?” he says finally.

“Well...I don’t imagine there’s much opportunity to meet people out at the farm. I just thought you might be getting lonely.”

He notices again how good she looks. She’s wearing makeup, and a cropped top that displays her tanned and toned abs, and the little moles he used to kiss one by one. But if she’s offering, well, whatever she’s offering or not offering, he finds that he doesn’t want it. He’s indifferent to her now.

He smiles at her, shakes his head slightly, says that he appreciates her concern, but since she’s willing to sell the farm, they really don’t have anything else to talk about. Being Gigi, she abandons whatever plan she had in her head and nods. “Ok, then. I don’t regret our time together, I hope you know that.”

Zayn doesn’t respond to that, since her time with him was nothing but good for her brand. It kept him in the news too, but that’s a place he no longer wants to be. He stands. “I’ve got places to be, Gigi. I’m going to head out. I’ll tell my lawyer to get in touch with yours, and of course stop by to see Stitch and the horses any time you’re out that way.” 

They exchange smaller smiles now, and Gigi surprises him by standing up too, leaving her flat white untouched. She tosses a bill on the table and says, “Yeah, I’ve got places to be too. I’ll walk out with you.” 

Zayn supposes that he shouldn’t be surprised when he hears the first call, “Zayn! Gigi! Are you back together again?” The paparazzi cameras flash, and Zayn knows that Gigi called them herself. For a moment, he is angered, and then he thinks,  _ why not _ , whatever game she is playing isn’t his, and he doesn’t care why she wanted this. He kisses her on the cheek, gives her a quick hug, and heads off in the opposite direction down the street when the paps follow her as she folds herself into the waiting car at the curb. 

He’s a block away when his phone buzzes. It’s an actual call; it might be important so he just answers. “Yeah?”

“Zayn! It’s Liam! Niall gave me your number. Are you good like he says?”

“Yeah, Li, I’m good. You caught me at kind of a bad moment, though. Can I call you back later?”

“Course, yeah, But here’s why I’m calling. I was thinking I might come visit in a few weeks when I’m in the States. Would that be possible? I’d love to see your place, get a chance to catch up.”

It strikes Zayn that he spent three years leaving the past behind him, and now it seems not only to have caught up with him but to be taking over his life. Still, he knew this call would come. He and Liam have texted a few times, and Niall is in touch with everybody. He shrugs helplessly in the busy city street. “Yeah, Li, of course. We can text about the details. It’ll be great to see you.”

He’s hardly lonely, is he? He thinks fleetingly of who would see the humor in this situation, all of it, Gigi, the paps, the call, even Connor and Lilia and Susana. There’s only one person who comes to mind, but he’ll never have that laugh with him. That’s a shame, really. Why do they have to be so stupid?

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you are enjoying this imaginary world of post-stardom Zayn as much as I am and that RL Zayn is enjoying his life. I noticed recent pics that suggest he's shaved his head again, but fic!Zayn would never. :)


	5. Chapter Five: Liam On The Way to the Farm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Zayn is waiting at the curb outside baggage claim after assuring Liam that no, he didn’t need to rent a car he would almost certainly not drive for however long he stayed, and no, it wasn’t too much trouble for Zayn to come and pick him up, and no, he shouldn’t bring any Hugo Boss for Zayn, thanks though. God knows what Liam thinks he needed to pack, and Zayn has seen the basically naked pics of his bandmate online, and no way will he fit into anything of Zayn’s, but he can figure it out. Zayn has enough on his mind without worrying if Liam will tear a pair of expensive designer trousers._
> 
> Liam is coming to the farm, but not without dropping a small bomb on the way. Oh, Liam.

When Zayn gets in from Pittsburgh, the back of the truck filled with as much as he could carry from Lilia and Susana’s apartment, including a single bed that solves one problem, he finds disconcerting changes afoot. Lilia and Susana in the house means that the smell of frying meat and beans permeates the air, and somehow Stitch is limping, in spite of there being someone around the whole five days Zayn has been gone. He swallows his irritation at life in general, as well as his longing for a few days alone after the sensory overload of New York. 

But then Lilia cries when she sees everything Zayn has brought them, and his irritation mostly vanishes. It feels good to do something for her. He used to love doing things for his boys, too.

Lilia had called two men she calls “primos” to help Zayn get things down the stairs of her apartment building to his illegally parked truck, and even though they spoke little English it was easy enough to see that they planned to put everything Zayn could carry into the bed. Clothes and kitchen items were already in boxes when he got there, and then it was just carrying load after load down two flights of stairs until Zayn could not legally drive with another item in the back. Once again he feels grateful that he’s quit smoking. He’s ready to get back to work with Hedda and to put out the lavender starts, and to return to his regular routines, but Liam is coming. In a week. Zayn sighs quietly as he drives away from Lilia’s neighborhood. She has real problems; his are minor in comparison.

Connor is waiting when Zayn comes out, tee shirt slightly damp with Lilia’s tears, to start moving the contents of the truck into the home studio Niall just helped him set up. “My mom said Lilia was living out here and you were picking up her stuff in the city,” he says. “Thought I’d help you unload.”

Zayn again marvels at the ways people outside the city pitch in for each other. In New York, he could have and probably would have hired someone to handle the entire move--now that he thinks of it, he could have hired someone anyway, but he hadn’t planned on bringing most of the apartment with him in the truck, and maybe it’s a good idea to stop thinking of himself as someone who hires things done since he’s earning so little and spending so much these days. 

He likes to leave his principal alone, so he is living off interest from investments, meanwhile the place in LA is still sitting on the market like a bad memory. Even the one he doesn’t think of has sold his place already, but his is more remote and maybe less desirable for having been his. He shakes himself a little, takes a deep breath to release the anxiety that wants to tighten his throat, and smiles at Connor. “Yeah, thanks. Much appreciated.”

Connor is turning 18 next week, and Zayn watches as he walks ahead of Zayn to the truck, noticing how fit he is, that his shoulders are broad, his waist and hips narrow, how his bum displays the tight, high plump of youth and physical labor. For a second, Zayn thinks it would be lovely to take him to bed, to be his first, probably, at least his first man almost certainly, but it’s a ridiculous thought. Even if he wanted it, where would this glorious deflowering take place? Out in the goat barn? Tucked in amongst the kudzu? 

No, everything is as it should be, and he wordlessly backs the truck up to the studio entrance, lowers the tailgate, and takes his end of the mattress that is tied precariously over the bed frame and boxes and planters and lamps that three men had decided were the most important items to an absent woman and her daughter. It is very like Lilia that she didn’t make a list, just “whatever you can fine and breeng, Mr. Zayn, ees too good for me.” His heart fills up with affection for her and for Connor, who has just come, unrequested but very much needed, to help. As soon as they’ve done this, he’ll see if Stitch has something in his paw. If not, it’ll be off to the vet in the morning as soon as the animals are tended to. Life on the farm resumes.

Zayn is waiting at the curb outside baggage claim after assuring Liam that no, he didn’t need to rent a car he would almost certainly not drive for however long he stayed, and no, it wasn’t too much trouble for Zayn to come and pick him up, and no, he shouldn’t bring any Hugo Boss for Zayn, thanks though. God knows what Liam thinks he needed to pack, and Zayn has seen the basically naked pics of his bandmate online, and no way will he fit into anything of Zayn’s, but he can figure it out. Zayn has enough on his mind without worrying if Liam will tear a pair of expensive designer trousers.

The windows are down on the truck, and every few minutes he starts the engine and moves a few car lengths further down the curbside to avoid being told he’s in a no parking zone. Liam has suggested that he at least hire someone to bring his things to the farm, but Zayn surprises himself by responding rather sharply, “Nah, that’s not how we live out here, Li. We pick up our own things.” 

So he’s been texted a couple of times that Li is waiting for his bags and how he hopes Zayn is sorry if he gets recognized and mobbed by fans. Zayn knows it’s unlikely. First of all, it’s Pittsburgh, it’s not even Philly, and second of all, when you don’t travel with an entourage anyone who gives you a second glance just thinks, wow, he looks a lot like Zayn Malik, or wow, he looks a lot like Liam Payne. He had told Liam to wear regular clothes, nothing designer, and a baseball cap, and chances were no one would give him more than a quick glance. 

He almost put Stitch in the truck to come with, but then he figured Liam was already in enough culture shock. Stitch did have a tiny rock embedded in the soft pad of his right front paw, and Zayn couldn’t get it out without hurting him, and he had in fact taken him to the vet, reasoning better that he think the vet was an old meany than he feel that way about Zayn, and ever since Stitch has been sticking close by him. He doesn’t like the women much, nor all the uproar of the house in recent days, but that has been solved for him as well. 

Zayn was making his biweekly drop off of produce, the last of the lettuce before it bolted, to exchange with his neighbor Sarah for her blueberries just now ripened, and she invited him in for tea as she always did, where he made the mistake of complaining just a bit, maybe more than just a bit, about Liam coming and where he was going to put him when Lilia and Susana were already there. 

“Well,” Sarah had said in her plainspoken way. “They’ll come here. How long is this friend staying?”

“I’m going to make it a week and no more, because I’m too busy right now and he doesn’t know anything about a farm, and no, it’s not possible and it’s not right to disrupt Lilia and Susana when he just randomly decided to come out here without much warning--”

“Oh, posh, Zayn,” Sarah interrupted. “You’re being ridiculous. I know Lilia. You forget that I was the one who recommended her to you. I have plenty of room and no guests coming. She can help me do a big cleaning, and you and your boyfriend can wallow in your own filth for a week. It’s settled.” 

At this Zayn blushes furiously--how did Sarah know what he’d been thinking? Every man he sees looks good to him lately.

And that had been that. Lilia and Susana had cooked several meals for Zayn and cleaned the house for hours before getting in Zayn’s truck on the day of Liam’s arrival and allowing themselves to be delivered “next door,” a ten minute drive once they were through Zayn’s gate, where he was reminded again that he needed to give his farm a name. If he were able to start selling the goats-milk soap that he was going to make once he had his lavender thriving next summer, then he needed something to put on the labels. He would love to give it a name in Urdu, or maybe something that recalled...a time and a place, but better probably to stick with something plain. Occupied in these thoughts, he almost missed the turn in to Sarah’s drive and had to turn the wheel sharply, causing Susana to crash into Lilia and making them both squeal. “SORRY!”

“Pay attenshun, Mr. Zayn, so you can go pick up your fren’ alive!”

And then Sarah is out the door, and Susana is grabbing their suitcases out of the back of the truck, and he is alone at last, if only for a short while. It takes less than half an hour to drive to the Pittsburgh airport and where he is now waiting, impatient to return to the farm and to Stitch, whom Zayn thinks is still limping slightly.

His phone buzzes.  _ Got my bags. On my way out looking for a faded red Ford pickup with a hot farmer at the wheel _ . Honestly, Liam should watch himself.

“Liam!” Zayn sees Liam looking lost, probably navigating his own way for the first time in ages, and he calls through the open passenger window to the really too well dressed and definitely too fit man in the incongruous baseball cap. “LI! OVER HERE!”

Liam catches sight of him, his face lights up, and once again Zayn goes all soft and gooey inside. He doesn’t know what is the matter with him lately. Everything makes him want to cry. But Liam looks like Liam, still slightly round cheeked and puppyish in spite of the muscles that strain his button down shirt. Zayn guesses this is what Liam now thinks of as dressing down, since he’s in (expensive) jeans and trainers. Ah well. He looks good, too, just like Niall, and when Zayn hops out of the truck to grab a bag to throw in the back of the truck, where he has thoughtfully put an old horse blanket to protect them, Liam grabs onto him and gives him one of his best Liam hugs. All the boys hugged like this, with enthusiasm and love, except for the one. Fuck him, Zayn thinks fiercely. Fuck him and his rich city life and his connections and his pretentious art collection. Fuck his crazy tattoos and his gorgeous green eyes…

“Zayn! Let go of me, mate! That traffic cop is waving at us to get out of the roadway!”  _ Oh _ . 

“Sorry, Liam, it’s been too long. Let’s get your gear in the back.” When he sees Liam side eyeing his Louis Vitton luggage going into the back of a pickup, he protests: “Hey! I put a blanket down for you and everything! They laugh at each other a bit nervously and get in.

Zayn has made his peace already with telling Liam little white lies about his music. He knows he won’t need to say much; Liam has always been the talker of the five of them, and he never needed much encouragement. It happens as expected. Liam asks him if he’s heard the new music, and he nods and smiles. Liam takes this as praise, and most of the ride back to the farm is Liam talking about everything he’s been doing lately. All Zayn has to do is interject an occasional “sick!” to let him know he’s listening.

He’s drifted off a bit, as he’s prone to do, so he almost misses it when Liam says, “Oh, by the way, Zayner, now don’t get mad, but I invited Louis out too. He’s going to get here day after tomorrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are at last picking up, since having Louis around guarantees excitement. And then, well. We know where we're headed.
> 
> Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy Farmer!Zayn and his new and old relationships even a fraction of how much I do.


	6. Liam and Louis at the Farm: The Past Is Present

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _As soon as he steps out of the car, Zayn can see he’s changed. It’s in the relaxed slope of his shoulders, the brightness of his eyes, the ready smile, but it’s more than that. He looks happy. On impulse--and damn his impulses but he will always be a slave to them--Zayn steps quickly off the porch and to where Louis stands at the side of the truck, and he throws his arms around him, grateful when Louis’s arms come around to grasp him hard in return. To his everlasting embarrassment, Zayn starts to sob._
> 
> Ah, Zayn. He really does wear his heart on his sleeve, and seeing Louis brings it all up and out for him. They have a good chat, Louis and Zayn do.

Zayn doesn’t remember the last time he felt this angry. For a minute he’s distracted, trying to remember when it was and at whom, but then he pulls over to the side of the I-376, unmindful of the traffic on a Sunday night, and stares at Liam, who is turned toward him, wide-eyed.

“What.The.Actual.Fuck, Liam.” he finally sputters. “First you basically invite yourself out to the farm, with no notice--”

“Fuck, Zayn, I’m sorry. I should have asked you if it was convenient. It’s just Niall was sure you’d be glad to see me, and you know Louis and I talk pretty regular, and it seemed like a good idea when he brought it up--”

“Wait, this was Louis’s idea?”

“Well, not me coming, but him coming out after a day or two, get you used to the idea, but I said, ‘nah, Zayn won’t be still holding a grudge, it’ll be fine.’ Honestly, I thought it would!”

Liam’s puppy eyes are sincere and slightly wet, and Zayn finds it infuriating to remember how Li could always get him to calm down, even after he’d done something genuinely shitty, like when he used to make Zayn jealous onstage. He takes a deep, shuddering breath. This is not okay.

“Since when do you and Louis know anything about me, Liam. I haven’t spoken to Lou in well over three years, and not to you in almost as long. Honestly, what the fuck?” Zayn throws his hands in the air and lands them heavily on the steering wheel. He knows that he should pull back onto the freeway, that Stitch is inside and will need to go out, that the ordinary evening activities of returning animals to barns and coops, seeing that they are safe and fed, the regular walking up and down crop rows to check for infestations, all must be carried out whether he is mad or sad or glad. He doesn’t have time for any of this.

It’s Niall’s fault. He should never have had him out to the farm and then let him stay on past his scheduled visit. Zayn needs his routines; he is kept in check by them. He overestimated his wellness.

“I’m sorry, Zayn,” Liam says quietly. “Look, I’ll call Lou and tell him not to come. I’ll call my PA and get booked on a flight out tomorrow. You can just take me back to an airport hotel. I never meant to upset you.”

“Ah, Liam. Fuck. It’s not you; it’s me. I’ve been in a routine for too long. I don’t handle disruptions, and there’s been a fair number all in a row. It’s alright. I don’t know about Lou, but let’s just drive home without talking for a bit, and let me have a think.” He starts the truck, puts it in gear, presses the accelerator and winces as the gravel kicks up into the undercarriage, picking up speed to merge into the traffic.

Zayn remembers his therapist telling him what to do when his defensiveness kicks in, when he gets all prickly and paranoid and blaming. He can hear her voice in his head, “Breathe, Zayn. You’re not that important in the grand scheme of things, right, love? No one is out to get you. Breathe. Remember that you are just a small cog in a big wheel, and it turns. Feel it turning. Hear the sound of the wheel, going round and round. Just breathe it in.” For minutes, it’s all he can do, just breathe and listen to the wheel of life rolling, not that interested in his anxiety or his convenience, just life being life. As usual, he feels ridiculous doing it. As usual, it helps.

He and Liam are silent. Zayn thinks to turn on the radio but doesn’t want to risk touching Liam in making the gesture. He lets the silence settle, willing himself not to be uncomfortable with it. He makes the turn off the interstate onto the state road that will take him within a few minutes of the farm. 

Finally he is able to speak. “I’m sorry, Liam. It seems to be my disposition lately to be dickish. It’s like my first response to anything upsetting, or any change, really, is to think someone is out to get me. You probably meant to help, yeah?”

Liam is eager, the way he’s always been eager, easy to please and to be pleased. “No, mate, you have every right. I haven’t seen you for an age, and I just invited myself out, and then I invited Louis like it was my place to do it. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, you shouldn’t have done it. Really, it wasn’t your place, and I should have you call him and tell him not to come.” They sit for a minute, something in Zayn’s voice, or in his  _ should _ , making Liam wait.

At last Zayn continues. “The thing is, I miss him, Li. I’ve missed you all, but Lou and me, we were really close there near the end, you know, once…” Zayn shrugs, unable to continue. “It hurt when he turned his back on me, but I couldn’t see that he was going through so much shit of his own. I wasn’t there for him. I wasn’t there for any of you.” He thinks to say  _ I’m sorry _ , but Liam has violated the unspoken terms of his welcome. He won’t say sorry, not this time.

They fall silent again, an uneasy peace fragile between them. Neither speaks until they are at the gate, and Zayn is punching in the code and waiting as it swings inward to the long drive leading up to the house in the distance. He is aware once more of how different he has become here, how much softer and kinder he usually is. Is it only the place, or has he changed at all?

They pull all the way up the drive to the house. “Right, then. I’m going to show you to your room, and then I suggest you put on something comfortable. Hope you brought some trackies and tees, because we don’t dress for anything out here. I’ve got to let Stitch out and tend to my animals. Do you want to go with?”

“Yeah, I’ve been looking forward to seeing the place. But maybe you’d like some time to yourself? I’m pretty knackered anyway.”

Zayn feels himself want to take offense at this, feels himself bristling at the idea that he can’t be a good host, but he breathes out the enmity, aware suddenly how much he needs time alone and also this time with these men second only to his family in influence over him. Being with Niall had lulled him into a sense of complacency, a belief that this would be easy.

“Ok, Liam, let me show you the quirks of an old farmhouse. The water takes forever to heat up in the bath, and the toilet handle sticks--you’ve got to jiggle it sometimes. Here, let me take a bag.”

They go up the stairs, and Zayn sees his place through Liam’s eyes as they do. It’s clean and orderly, nothing like any place Zayn has ever lived before. The walls are painted various shades of soft neutral; the furniture is comfortable and the opposite of trendy. It’s comfortable but not cool. It could belong to his granny, to be honest. Only his own artwork on the walls of the stairs and in the bedrooms suggests anything contemporary. He shows Liam into the guest room, gestures to the closet, the chest of drawers, the bathroom across the hall. Then he goes outdoors, able to breathe at last. 

In retrospect, he’s grateful to Liam, as much as he finds him changed and as little as they now have in common. He’s known all along that he and Louis still had all the potential to be friends, that they would understand each other, and Liam is right in this. He’s been a little hard on Liam for trying to help, same as he always has.

They spend a day around the farm, giving Liam multiple opportunities to ooh and ah and generally show how sorry he is for being presumptuous. He makes Liam haul bags of feed out to the horse trough so he can show him how strong he is now. He admires his biceps and jokes about his sexy Instagram photos. “Hey, you’ve done plenty of shirtless pics too, you arsehole!” Liam protests.

“Yeah, but I didn’t have any muscles at all at the time. It wasn’t sexy, just shirtless,” Zayn says. “I never do it anymore, since I’m so ripped. I’d be too sexy for my fans to handle.”

They grin at each other, both thinking of the screaming fans, of all those teenage girl hormones coming at them in a rush, at how much it all went to their heads in their various ways. They didn’t need muscles in those days to be desired.

They can’t get in the studio, packed as it is with Lilia and Susana’s belongings, which is a good thing, Zayn thinks privately. The last thing he wants to do is hear Liam’s music, nor does he want his opinions on his own. It takes most of the day to walk around the property, harness the horses and take them on a canter around the outskirts of the farm to give Liam an idea of what Zayn is trying to do, tend to what has to be tended. By the early evening, they are both tired enough to take showers and go into town for pizza.

At last Zayn brings up Louis. “You didn’t tell him not to come, did you?”

Liam gives him a look. “No, I didn’t. I know you want to see him, and he wants to see you. He’s different, Z. He’s way softer, way more open than he’s been in years. I’ve been with him more than you lot--.” He stops at Zayn’s expression, which he isn’t controlling as well as he would like. “That’s not a criticism. He blamed you for a long time, we all did. Well, except for Niall, who never blames anybody. Especially right after you left. Like, we knew that it was Harry’s fault, mostly, but he stayed with us, so we couldn’t really afford to be mad at him, you know? You were gone.”

“Yeah, I get that, finally. I was in therapy my last year in New York, and my therapist helped me see beyond the end of me own nose, like, how much I hurt you all because of how much I was hurting, and how I couldn’t keep blaming myself for it, how I had to let it go.”

A few people stop by their table at the only pizza place in town. Farmers want to know if his strawberry starts have taken and why he chose such a small variety. They ask about trades, having heard what he’s doing with Sarah. This is pretty new, being accepted as a farmer by farmers. No one seems to mind his accent nor his looks; he’s just a farmer, finally. Liam looks a bit impressed, as well he should.

Connor comes in with two of his friends, and Zayn is reminded that he has yet to get something for his birthday. He thinks he wants it to show gratitude and appreciation but can’t be too personal. But not impersonal like cash. He thinks that he’ll give him a piece of art that he mentioned liking once. He just needs to wrap it up in brown butcher paper and twine, a typical country presentation. He’ll do it when they get back, since Connor’s birthday is tomorrow.

“Hey, Zayn,” Connor says as he brings his friends over to the table. One looks familiar; Zayn thinks Connor had him with him to help one or two times. The other, smaller and slight of frame, and dressed like he might have just driven in from the streets of New York, doesn’t look like a farm boy. “You’ve met Jake? And this is Stephen.” He pronounces it with a short e, another indication that this boy isn’t local. Zayn doesn’t ask, just shakes hands and introduces them to Liam. They don’t seem to recognize Liam, much to Zayn’s amusement.

“You won’t be out tomorrow, yeah? Because it’s your birthday?”

Connor’s cheeks pink slightly. “You remembered? No, I’ll still be there. We celebrated at home last night, and the boys are taking me out for pizza now. We don’t make a deal of birthdays too much in my family.”

“I have a little something for you,” Zayn says, hoping that it doesn’t sound gross. “Just, like, to say thank you for all your help and all.”

Connor pinks up even more. “Oh! That’s really nice, Zayn. Well. We should get a table. See you tomorrow. Nice to meet you, Liam.” He and the other boys turn away, and Zayn turns back to Liam to see he’s wearing an expression. Jesus. Why is Connor so obvious?

“Well, he’s a sweet little morsel, isn’t he? Is there anything you’d like to tell Daddy Direction, Zaynie?”

“Fuck off, Liam. It’s not like that. He has a bit of a crush, is all. You know how people are.”

“No, Zayn. Tell me how  _ people _ are.” He clasps his hands under his chin and bats his eyes. It could be anytime in the last decade, one of the boys taking the piss over someone crushing on Zayn. He always got the gay boys, even if Connor’s not really gay.

Zayn has to laugh. “They do like me. They can sense my ambiguous sexuality. But Connor’s not gay--I mean, I think he’s had a girlfriend, and anyway, God, he’s too young, and he works for me, and it would be awful.”

Liam laughs. “You’ve thought about it, you dirty bugger.”

For a moment, it feels like old times, and Zayn relaxes for the first time since picking up Liam at the airport. He’s still Liam, underneath the bullshit. Nobody changes that much, except the one he doesn’t think of.

“So Louis is coming out tomorrow? Do we need to pick him up?”

“He insisted on renting a car, Zayn. I think he wanted to be able to make a quick escape in case you went after him.”

Zayn starts to protest until he sees that Liam is smiling, and so he smiles back, takes a gulp of his beer, and decides to ride this particular wave wherever it wants to go. Clearly he can’t predict it.

Louis’s flight doesn’t get in until 5, but it’s summer now, and it’ll be light forever, and Niall has told Louis every way he could get lost and how to use the GPS actually to arrive at the farm, and so Liam and Zayn both figure they can do as they like. Zayn calls Hedda to say, one more week without vocal lessons, and she fusses at him and accuses him of smoking, and when Connor comes out prepared to work Zayn gives him his gift and makes him leave, both to avoid embarrassment and because he wants to give him a paid day off for once while Liam is being surprisingly helpful with chores. He takes Liam over to meet Sarah, Lilia, and Susana, and he doesn’t miss the speculative look Lilia gives Liam, like he really is Zayn’s boyfriend. He hopes that Susana hasn’t been on Tumblr reading Ziam blogs and filling her mother’s head full of nonsense, but he wouldn’t put it past her. Susana thinks at 27 that Zayn is impossibly old, but she still takes an interest in his love life, or lack thereof. She catches him in Sarah’s kitchen to whisper, “Is it true about you and him? Is he your OTP, Zayn?”

He swats at her, laughing, but he doesn’t deny it. He finds that he doesn’t care anymore what people make of him. Maybe the one he doesn’t think of had been right all along. No labels. And Liam looks really really good. If he didn’t have a girlfriend that he won’t shut up about, he might make a move, see if there was anything there to explore. They did kiss that one time.

When they get back to the farm, Louis isn’t in yet. They have time to settle on the porch with beers, and for Liam to light a cigarette, his first of the day. It smells delicious, and Zayn is thinking he might ask for one when they both hear the gate swing inward and the sound of a car starting up the drive. It’s Louis.

Zayn and Liam are both standing for some reason as Louis pulls up beside the house. He’s rented a pickup truck, which makes Zayn smile in spite of himself. Louis trying to fit in--he  _ is _ different.

As soon as he steps out, Zayn can see he’s changed. It’s in the relaxed slope of his shoulders, the brightness of his eyes, the ready smile, but it’s more than that. He looks happy. On impulse--and damn his impulses but he will always be a slave to them--Zayn steps quickly off the porch and to where Louis stands at the side of the truck, and he throws his arms around him, grateful when Louis’s arms come around to grasp him hard in return. To his everlasting embarrassment, tears well in his eyes.

“Fuck, Louis. I’m so glad to see you. I’m sorry you had to come to me. I’m sorry for everything. Just, fuck. Sorry.” He tries breathing, but the emotions are overwhelming him. This was his best mate, the person who understood him better than anyone, the friend who he confessed to, sought permission from, the only one who knows all of the story of how it all ended, and yet the one who was angriest at him. He has so many feelings.

Louis rubs the middle of his back, murmuring, “Jesus, Zayn, you’ve got muscles, mate. What the fuck--now stop this. You’ll get me going, and then we’ll be out here in the drive acting like a couple of babies. Ssshhh, it’s alright, mate. I know. We’re assholes. We’ve always been.”

Zayn becomes aware that Liam is standing there too, awkwardly at this point, and he rubs his eyes with the bottom of his tee shirt, before reluctantly letting go and letting Liam in for his hug. And then there is a moment where they are all just standing there, looking at each other. Finally, Louis breaks the silence.

“I presume from all this emotion that you’re glad I came, Zed? Maybe we could get my bag in the house, and you two could start me on the beers I can smell you’re drinking. Sound like a plan?”

Zayn looks at his two friends gratefully. He’s so fucking glad they’re here.

“Come in. We’ll get beers, and then Liam and I had decided to have breakfast for dinner. Is that alright? Between the two of us, I think we can keep you out of the kitchen, avoid any disasters, and make a proper English brekkie for us all.”

It’s midnight, and Liam has gone off to bed. There’s an extra bed in the guest room, brought in from Lilia’s, so Louis can share with him. Zayn has offered his own room, since he can still sleep anywhere and doesn’t mind the couch, but Louis says no, he and Liam are used to each other and won’t mind sharing. Zayn thinks that Liam has been the sensitive person he’s always been and gone off to let him and Louis have a chat alone. Instead, it seems that they’re going to get high.

“Yeah, I had a friend of a friend in Pittsburgh meet me at the airport with some bud,” Louis explains. “I wasn’t sure you even partake anymore. Niall and Liam both say you’re very clean living these days.”

“Yeah, it’s farm life, Lou. I get up so fucking early.” He has Stitch on his lap and is rocking gently while Stitch snores. His paw has healed, and he’s gone back to living the good farm life, sometimes hanging out with the goats all afternoon and coming in full of burrs that Zayn has to fuss over and pull out. Zayn is again overwhelmed with how good it is to see Louis, especially like this. He has to know.

“What changed, Lou? Why have you forgiven me?”

Louis shakes his head. “I dunno, mate. I guess losing Fizz did something to me, made me stop and think about what’s important and what’s not. I don’t want any grudges in me life, and I missed you.”

“This is going to sound proper egotistical, but did you write about me on the album?”

“You’re right--it sounds proper egotistical! Yeah, it’s true enough you were on my mind. I know everybody thought the Princess Park reference was about Hazza, and it was, a bit, but it was about all of us, about that time and never wanting to forget it. I’m not pining for him, Zayn. I made my peace with all that long ago. You know that.”

So. They’re going there. Zayn doesn’t know if he’s ready, but life comes at you anyway. He answers before he can change his mind.

“Do you talk to him? Have you talked to him?”

“Yeah, we actually saw each other about a year ago. I got in touch with him. I don’t remember why, except that I didn’t hear from him when Fizzy passed, and he seemed to be so indifferent to the past. I guess I wanted to see for meself.”

“And? Is he different? Because he was already different back then.”

“Ah, Zayn, I mean, yeah, he’s different the way we all are. Liam’s different. Niall’s different, You’re different; in fact, I’d say next to me you’ve changed the most by far. Harry always liked the high life, didn’t he? Not like you and me.”

Zayn wants to ask if they talked about him. He wants to know what it felt like to be in front of Harry, if he still had that glow that he used to have, the one Zayn hardly ever could see in pictures any more. But pictures lie, he knows. He wants to know everything, and Louis knows him as usual.

“You want a play by play, Z? Shall I tell you where we met, and what we said, all that I can remember?”

Zayn only hesitates a moment. “Yeah, I think basically that’s what I want.”

“And you want to know if we talked about you. That’s complicated, because Hazza made me promise I would never tell you anything he said. I might have mentioned that sooner or later I was going to get in touch with you too.”

“Ah, Lou, you fucker. You knew I would want to know. You knew I would. Why would you make a promise like that?” He shakes his head, jiggling his knee uncontrollably and causing Stitch to grunt in protest.

“It’s not for me to say, Zayn. It’s never been. I know I put me nose in your business a lot there at the end, and I know you think I took his side, but I never did. I just knew he was staying, and you were going, and loyalty seemed important to me. It still does. You know me.”

Louis looks over at him. “I think we should get high before we talk about any more of this. What do you think?”

“I’ll take a few hits, but I don’t really smoke anything anymore. I get really stoned really fast, and then I fall asleep.”

“That might be for the best, mate.”

Zayn takes a few hits, but he doesn’t get nearly as high as he did before Niall came. He listens as Louis tells him the edited version of meeting Harry, how he seemed different at first but warmed up after a bit. He says he’s still their Hazza, still kind of odd and clumsy, still talks so slow that you find yourself finishing his sentences and annoying him. He looks good but different, Louis says. More of a man. 

“He has an actual moustache, Zayn. Really! I had to see it to believe it. I didn’t like it much, but he was so proud that he could grow one I didn’t have the heart to say it didn’t look all that great. He’s got muscles, too. Like, he was always taller than the rest of us, but now he’s big.”

Zayn thinks of Gigi saying that about him, and he flashes briefly on what it would feel like to hold this new, bigger Harry. To feel his muscular back against his hands. He stops himself, because he can’t. There’s no coming back for them. No path that would lead from him to Harry.

Louis is still telling him about his impressions of Harry. “He’s still like super polite, right? Like he took me to this tea shop near his house, and he asked about the counter girl’s baby, and he knew all the regulars. They all love him, of course. He’s so easy to love when you don’t know him.” 

Zayn snorts at this; it was something he and Louis used to say all the time, how Harry looked so good from a distance but was a lot harder to love when you knew him well. It hadn’t stopped either of them, though, had it?

“And is he happy, Lou? How did he seem?”

“I dunno, Zayn. I couldn’t tell really. We were closer after you left, but he never talked about you, and he was on his way out. It was really obvious, like, right away, that he was eyeing the exits. And I had been loyal to him, after all, and then I felt a bit betrayed by the way he seemed to turn on us and want out so quickly. I don’t think it’s breaking a confidence to say he was shattered after you left. Or that he had to do some things, like, emotionally, to get by after.” It physically hurts Zayn to hear this. He breathes out his shame and his anxiety into the night sky of the farm, up to the stars he’d never seen in the city. Louis continues.

“We were all pretty fucked up, but you know Haz. He always has to be the good boy, so he was snarky about you a bit, and then he shut it down, and after that he would reach out to me a bit more, more than in a long time, but he didn’t let his guard down. He’s basically that same guy we parted from at the end of 2015. So, is he happy? Nah, I don’t think so.” 

Zayn wants to ask if it has anything to do with him, if Harry longs for him still, if he’s sorry for the things they said, if any of his songs were for Zayn. He is surprised by how quickly the ice around that part of his heart has melted, just knowing that Harry is maybe not happy, maybe still misses him a bit, the way he misses him. He doesn’t ask, though. He doesn’t want Louis to tell him no, and he doesn’t want to presume any more than he’s already done. They lapse into silence and listen to the breeze rustling the corn and wafting the smell of the roses planted across the drive toward them, their soft sweetness carrying the ache of memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's coming closer, isn't it? If you're hanging in with this fic version of slow food, then I thank you. I feel very close to this fictional Zayn with all his heartaches and healing. But the best is still to come for him.


	7. Interlude III: Zayn Alone at the Farm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He thinks again what Louis had asked him only last night.  
“Z, it’s quite simple, ain’t it--do you want to be happy, or do you want to be right?”  
_I want to be happy_, Zayn thinks.
> 
> As always, Louis helps Zayn to see clearly.

This time, Zayn doesn’t have even a day without missing his boys. Louis is supposed to stay just three days, but instead he stays throughout Liam’s visit, making excuses to Briana, making Liam jealous of the time he and Zayn so clearly want. When it’s time to get in the rental to make it into Pittsburgh for their afternoon flights, Liam back to London and Louis to LA, he hugs Zayn, hard, and whispers, “I’ll come back, yeah? I don’t want to go this long again, ever.”

Zayn smiles stupidly at him. He’s just  _ Louis _ , funny and profane and honest and so so loving. It was always Louis that made him feel loved, Zayn realizes. He wants to love Liam more, but it was always Louis at the heart of them all. Harry may have been the front man, but Louis was the center.

He can say it now:  _ Harry _ . Louis did that for him. On the last night, after Liam went to bed early as always, being considerate of their needs, they really talked. They didn’t have to get high; they both nursed a single beer for two hours without noticing. They pushed their rocking chairs opposite each other, leaned forward, gesticulated. Sometimes Louis rested his hand on the top of Zayn’s. At a distance, they must have looked like a couple discussing their divorce.

“You took his side, Lou,” Zayn says, more than once. “I couldn’t forgive you for it. You know how shit he acted.”

“You acted shit, too, Zayn,” Louis says simply, every time. The repetition goes unnoticed; it punctuates their conversation like commas, granting pauses to remember why they’d been so angry.

“You weren’t there, Lou. You didn’t hear what he said to me that night in Bangkok.”

“No, I didn’t. I took Liam and Niall and got the fuck out of the hotel, because it was brewing all day. I knew you were going to blow up, and I knew Haz wasn’t going to back down. You were so used to him backing down from you.”

“He wasn’t faithful.”

“I can’t believe you even can say that with a straight face, mate! You were fucking engaged! You were moody all the fucking time, you snapped at Niall, for fuck’s sake, NIALL. And Haz would go along behind you trying to placate you. It was fucking painful to watch.”

“He never--.”

“He did, Zayn. You were too far up your own ass to see it. He tried to please you, but you weren’t having it. You told me that the only reason he was doing it was to keep you in the band.”

“That was right,yeah? He was just trying to make me stay till the tour was over so we wouldn’t all lose our bonuses.”

“Jesus, Zayn, you’re a fucking asshole if you think that. Who knows Harry better than we do? Who?”

Zayn has to look down then. He still thinks no one will ever know Harry the way he and Louis had. They had all known each other, the way you do when you’re together all the time and going through something big like they were, but it was always special with the three of them. He and Louis, they had always looked out for Harry, and they had each taken their turn with him, hadn’t they? In a way?

“We did, Lou, you and me. I just, I felt so bad, I felt sick and sad and used up, like there was nothing I could give anybody. I thought none of you could care about me, so in my head,” Zayn pokes at his own temple repeatedly, as though Louis wouldn’t know where the source of his torment was, “in my head, I thought you hated me, everything you did was just for the money, not for me.”

“Ah, man, you were so fucked up. I wasn’t much better. Haz wasn’t any better. He fucking loved you, I think. I’ve thought about it a lot, and he never said, but I think he had fallen in love with you, like, he just wanted you there. It had naught to do with the rest of us. Jesus.”

Zayn’s eyes threaten tears again. Louis always could make him cry. He’s always seen straight into Zayn’s heart, and even when he hated him he loved him. “I guess I know that now. Were you jealous, Lou? Did we hurt you?”

“Yeah, of course you did. I mean, I was in love with him early on. He was such a softie, with that big smile of his and those dimples, looking at me like I hung the moon. I used to love running my hands through that silky hair. It was so soft back then. Just a baby, he was. But it was never going to happen. You knew how it was. I’m not gay. I’m not even bi, not really.”

“From time to time, there’ll be a man that I’m attracted to, it’s happened a couple of times since then, but it’s not strong enough what I can’t resist it. Not even with Harry, and he was the worst. By far, Z. He would touch me sometimes, just rub my arm with the tips of his fingers, and I’d get a boner. We were so young, and everybody was always telling us we were hot, and girls were always wanting to fuck us, I mean, I thought about sex constantly.” Louis shakes his head, remembering. 

“But half the time Paul or somebody would get between us and them, right, so we didn’t get the outlet there. I dunno how I resisted Harry, to be honest. Some nights I had to go out and leave him alone in that townhouse, I wanted him so bad.”

“Yeah, I know. He’d come over.”

“You never said!”

“We’ve all got secrets from those years, Lou. I knew he was your boy, but he was so sweet back then, and just put a shot in him, and he rubbed all over whoever was closest. Such a slag, that one.”

They laugh, even if it’s bittersweet. Young Harry had been something. It drew them together, back then.

After Louis and Liam leave it’s only an hour until Connor arrives for his three hours after school. Zayn is napping on the living room couch, something he hasn’t done in months. Connor’s gentle knock wouldn’t have awakened him, but Stitch’s excited yelps do. He yawns, thick headed and heavy bodied. He feels physically drained from all the late nights and emotionally drained from all the memories those nights have surfaced. He drags himself to the door, opens it, smiles sleepily at Connor.

“Oh!” Connor’s already wide blue eyes widen even more. “You were sleeping! I’m so sorry!”

“Nah, Connor, you’re on time. I’m the one lazing about like I’ve naught to do. Come in. Let’s have some coffee. I need to wake up.”

“Are you sure? Because I could just get to work…”

“Don’t be silly. We’ve got to bike out to the back fields, see how the corn is coming along. And you’ll never get the goats in without me.”

“Maybe we could train Stitch?” Connor picks him up, seeming to have resigned himself to both the delay and to Zayn’s help.

“That’s a thought, mate, but that dog right there is not smart.”

“He’s not that dumb. He’s got us wrapped around his paw,” Connor replies, kissing the top of Stitch’s head and rubbing his silky ears before putting him down.

In the kitchen, Zayn goes to the cabinet and takes out mugs and the coffee beans he grinds himself. When he turns to ask Connor how strong he wants it, he is right there, behind him, so close that Zayn bumps his hip, causing him to stumble a little. He grabs his forearm, steadies him.

“Sorry, mate! I didn’t realize you were so close.”

Connor blushes. He always blushes. Zayn thinks that maybe they need to talk about how he blushes. 

“Connor. Look at me.” Zayn looks up at him, briefly reminded of how often he looked up at Harry just this way, just this close, at about this angle. It got to Harry, the looking, just the way it’s getting to Connor right now. Zayn doesn’t know why his eyes seem to have this effect. It’s just long eyelashes, isn’t it. With an obvious effort, Connor holds his gaze, his blue eyes reminding Zayn of Louis’s and making him miss him fiercely already.

“Connor, I know you have a crush, or like, maybe, you like me a little too much? Or I’m older and I used to be famous, so I make you nervous. I dunno. I just see how you are around me. And I don’t want you to be, like, uncomfortable, or upset, or anything, but maybe we should talk about it.”

Connor turns an even deeper crimson, and then he can’t look at Zayn any more. This close, Zayn sees the impossible youth of him, the redness of his lips and the clarity and smoothness of his skin except for a little pimple on his chin, healing, making him all the lovelier for this imperfection. He reminds Zayn of Harry. Fuck. 

“Am I wrong, Connor?” he says, gesturing for him to sit at the table, putting the mug down where he wants him to sit. 

He grinds the beans, loads them into the coffee maker, turns the switch on. He hopes Connor has had time to compose himself.

He repeats himself, more gently. “Am I wrong, Connor? Tell me.”

Connor shakes his head slightly, swallows, and half whispers, “No, you’re not wrong. I’ve had a crush on you since the day I met you.” It’s unbearably soft, and it’s so much like Harry, Connor, this reliance on honesty when cornered. How many times had Zayn done just this?  _ Tell me, Harry. I know something’s going on. Tell me. _ And Harry would, he would open like a bud on one of Zayn’s roses across the drive.

“I’m more than flattered, Connor. I’m honored. You’re a good person and a lovely young man. I think you’re great, really I do. Someone is going to be really lucky to have you.” Jesus, Zayn feels a little self-disgust at the platitudes rolling so easily off his tongue. He might be Harry doing one of his interviews, saying nothing but taking his sweet time to do it. It never bothered Zayn the way it had Louis; he always thought it part of Harry’s charm, his ramblings, as though such a pretty mouth couldn’t be expected to make sense too. The thought of Harry prompts an impulsive addition. “It’s never going to happen, though. I’m in love with someone else.”

Zayn doesn’t know those words are coming; they surprise him as much as they do Connor, who is startled into looking at Zayn again, with a question in his eyes.

“Yeah, I’ve been in love for years. We had a falling out, and I try not to think about him, but he’s been there on my mind all this time.”

Zayn knows it’s true. He thinks again what Louis had asked him only last night.

“Z, it’s quite simple, ain’t it--do you want to be happy, or do you want to be right?”

_ I want to be happy _ , Zayn thinks.

Later that night, after he’s in bed, he picks up his phone and pulls up Harry’s number. He has it from Louis; he knows it’s his private number that only his friends have. His fingers shake as he texts:

_ Can we talk? _


	8. Zayn, Waiting at the Farm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Zayn decides he’ll try one more time. He hopes the number hasn’t changed. _
> 
> _He tries again, the same message plus a little more:_ Harry, it’s me. Can we talk? I’m sorry.
> 
> After reaching out to Harry last chapter, Zayn doesn't hear back, and it drives him mad.

Zayn tries not to think too much about why he has been tucking his phone into the pocket of the overalls he has taken to wearing for their deep pockets as he goes about his business on the farm.

The day after Louis leaves, the day after he sends the text, he should be exhausted but instead he has nervous energy to spare. He goes into town, to City Hall, and revises the permit applications for the cottage, submitting the new architectural plans and requests for water lines, plumbing, natural gas, and electric, paying fees, receiving assurances that they will fast track his permits, so he can pour the foundation by next week. He’s anxious to get the building done and is thinking about whether to hire a crew from Pittsburgh, but it will create ill will in town if he uses city contractors. 

Lilia and Susana are back, providing needed distraction, Lilia clucking over him and insisting that he’s lost weight and did he smoke with his friends. For a minute he thinks she means, you know,  _ smoke _ , and then he realizes she just means cigarettes. “No!” he says, finally. “I would never, Lilia! It was too hard to quit!” She looks at him skeptically, intuitively aware that he’s keeping something from her.

Some days pass. School is out, so Connor is with him full time. They repair fences, harvest the blackberries that grow wild along the far fence line. Lilia freezes most of them and makes two pies and two cobblers with the rest, freezing one of each for winter. “You gonna be glad to taste these berries, Mr. Zayn. Ees so nice to hab sometin from the summer when it’s snowing.” He knows. At least it’s sunny some of the time, not like London.

Connor and he are back to not talking much, as though those few words exchanged in the kitchen had been all they had to say. They work. They cut down a few trees at the back of the property and then have a local man come out to remove the stumps. They plan to extend the fields just a little further out next summer, or rather, Zayn will do it, since Connor will be away, going to ag school, learning how to make a profit from his family farm. Zayn for his part has to make some money. The farm is still a gentleman’s hobby and a money pit; he knows he can’t keep expanding unless the farm itself produces income or he produces income from music, more than the royalties he gets from songwriter credits, the occasional request to use a song in a commercial. He gave up his One Direction royalties to get out of his contract, and although he wouldn’t change it, knows he had to get out when he did, he mentally kicks himself when he thinks about the income those songs would be generating for him and the farm.

It’s almost time to harvest the lavender, and Sarah comes over to show him how to hang the cut branches in the barn, how to strip the dried lavender from them, how to store the fragrant blooms until he can make his sachets or soaps or whatever it is he’s going to do. Through all this activity, and he is busy, really busy, his phone remains silent. He reminds himself to be patient. He tells himself that he doesn’t deserve a reply, but the act of texting has opened up a stream of longing that threatens to drown him.

So Zayn works. When Connor leaves every day at 4:30, he walks the farm, going up and down rows of corn and beans and peas, using a mild soap to clear off any insects he finds. He rides both horses, even though he doesn’t completely trust Cool. He bathes Stitch, much to Stitch’s disgruntlement. He trims the horses’ hooves. He paints his bedroom and then graffiti paints a wall. It looks stupid, with his Pennsylvania Dutch quilt and weathered wood end tables, but it’s something to do. 

Zayn hauls out the free weights that he stored in the horse barn when he realized that he was going to build enough muscle just doing his regular farm work. He gets a personal trainer, the wrestling coach from Connor’s high school, to come out and create a routine for him, and every evening, when the sun is going down, he works out for at least a half hour, cycling through the muscle groups, sweating. Hedda comes on Wednesdays, and she is satisfied with Zayn’s progress although not especially happy about driving back to Pittsburgh after their session. She looks askance at Lilia and Susana, whispering to Zayn, “You are too nice, Zayn! You should be concentrating on your voice and your health, not allowing your home to be invaded by strangers!” He just smiles, thinking that he is lucky to have so many people who worry about how he’s living his life but they have no idea what really to worry about.

Even his nights are troubled. Harry visits him in dreams. In some, they are onstage, and Harry is skipping over to him, whispering in his ear,  _ hey, Zayn, you look so hot tonight, I can’t concentrate on my job _ , but dream Zayn tries to touch him and finds only air. A second later, Harry is on the other stage of the stage, kissing the heart tattoo on his arm the way he did sometimes, running his hands up and down his sides and thighs, moaning into the microphone, and Zayn tries to go to him, but he can’t move. He wakes up, breathing hard, shaking. 

Other times, Harry comes to him at the farm. He is standing on the porch, wearing the grandpa pants he has taken to of late, with a white wife beater. He is muscular, tan, beautiful. Zayn can see him, soft and smiling, through the screen, but the screen won’t open no matter how hard he pulls. He calls to him, “Harry! Harry!” but Harry just keeps smiling. From dreams like these he wakes up aroused. He wants. He has wanted. He will want. Harry is permanently inked into his skin.

The contractor is a good one, recommended by Sarah and sympathetic to the real urgency of Zayn’s need for a space for Lilia and Susana. He comes out and preps for the foundation in a single day, rents a cement mixer and pours the next, and now they are waiting for the cement to cure so the framers can come. For a few days, everything is in a state of suspended animation, Zayn included. 

He works. He maintains a frenzy of working: the farm has never looked so neat. Every surface has been cleaned, the animals shine, the horses are calm from regular exercise, the goats tamer than ever. They wander closer to the house, sometimes coming up on the porch to nudge Zayn as he sits with his afternoon tea. He takes to keeping treats in his pockets, carrot pieces for the horses and the goats, dog biscuits for Stitch. He no longer has to call; he is the Pied Piper of his farm, the man with treats.

After ten days, he texts Louis:  _ he hasnt gotten back to me lou i texted him right after you left _

Louis at least answers immediately.  _ do you not get google alerts mate hes been working _

Zayn knows that his Harry wouldn’t let work get in the way of answering him. He wouldn’t. He doesn’t know this new Harry though. Maybe he is a person who doesn’t answer back unless he needs something from you, and Zayn has nothing to offer but trouble. He fights his desire to construct a terrible Harry, selfish and cold, interested in his own pleasure and subject only to his own desires. He imagines Harry fucking models, male and female, fucking daddy figures, Harry with his daddy issues that Zayn could never help him resolve. Fan pics are posted on Twitter; he’s close to releasing new music, and suddenly he’s everywhere, wearing the wife beater of Zayn’s dreams, looking impossibly near, impossibly far away.

Zayn makes an appointment with his therapist in New York. He thinks he may need to go back on the anxiety medication he hasn’t needed for over a year. He wonders, is this new Zayn that he has so carefully constructed, who lives here on the farm, who takes care of animals and people, who uses only what he needs and gives back in turn, this man who wouldn’t use a boy like Connor, who would bury the grudges of the past--is he just as much a figment of his imagination as the Harry who haunts his dreams? He isn’t sure.

It is a Thursday evening. He and Connor have worked all day and then cleaned up after the framers. The air smells of fresh wood, animals, and the roses still in full bloom. A breeze has come up as the sun sets, and they are leaning against the paddock rails, feeding Mandarin and Cool bits of carrot. Zayn is thinking that he will have to name the goats, which he has not done because he didn’t know them until now, now that they follow him around like puppies. It amuses him to think he’ll name them after people in or related to the band. The one bumping his elbow right now is a nanny, but she is Harriet, never taking no for an answer, never bothered by rejection. Connor interrupts his musing.

“Are you alright, Zayn?”

Is he alright. He is faint with longing, questioning his every decision over the past years, burying himself in work to distract himself from what he has finally admitted he wants more than anything, has always wanted more than anything. Is he alright?

“Yeah, Connor, thanks. I texted my ex-boyfriend. He hasn’t gotten back to me. It’s been almost two weeks, and I’m half crazy over it, but yeah,” Zayn laughs a little. “Yeah, I mean, I’m as okay as I can be under the circumstances.”

Connor thinks about it, looks at Zayn with his clear blue eyes. “Are you sure he got your message? I mean, you haven’t said who it is, but I think I know.”

Zayn looks at him through narrowed eyes. “Have you been investigating, boy?”

_ Boy _ . Connor blushes, and Zayn feels like kicking himself. This young man has a daddy kink too. He should have known. “Have you, Connor?”

“Well, I just know what my little sister says, that you had a thing with Harry Styles, and that you had a bad breakup.”

“Ha! You’ve been gossiping about me with your little sister? I suppose she has a theory? Or maybe you both do?” The perils of having been famous and of Google. 

“I’m sorry, Zayn, it’s none of my business. I don’t really talk to Cara about you, but she’s been coming in my room with her theories. She’s obsessed with you, kind of, having a celebrity living so close by, and me working here. Anyway, never mind.”

They feed the horses carrots. Harriet nudges Zayn, and he scratches the top of her head before slipping a whole carrot into her mouth, the glutton. Just like Harry, trying to have it all right now.

“No. Tell me, Connor. I clearly don’t have a clue. Your little sister probably has a better idea than me.”

“Well, it’s just, did you check to see if he read the message?”

Did Zayn check to see if he’d read the message. No. No, he had not. He looks at Connor while he mutely shakes his head and reaches into his overall pocket. He opens up his texts. Delivered. Not read. “He didn’t read it.”

“Yeah, maybe somebody else had his phone, or well, we noticed that he got a new iPhone 11 so maybe it got lost while his new phone was downloading from the Cloud?” Connor shrugs, “I mean, it could be he just deleted it, but what if it’s not that?”

And what indeed? Happy or right. Happy or right.

Zayn decides he’ll try one more time. He hopes the number hasn’t changed. 

He tries again, the same message plus a little more:  _ Harry, it’s me. Can we talk? I’m sorry. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usual disclaimers.
> 
> Also, I'm sorry if you are reading this for Zarry and it's taking so long to get there. They have so many trust issues. Thanks for reading, and the payoff will come SOON.


	9. Interlude IV: A Talk With Harry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is texting. And feelings.

This time, after he sends the text to Harry, he doesn’t have to wait long. It’s not five minutes on--he and Connor are still leaned against the paddock rail, out of carrots but rubbing the horses’ noses and listening to Stitch bark--when Zayn’s phone rings. Actually rings, startling Zayn, Connor, and the horses. Zayn fumbles in his pocket, sees the caller’s name, gestures as he turns away from the rail.

“Zayn, it’s Harry. You texted me.”

“Yes, hey, Harry. I did. I hoped we could talk.” Zayn feels his hands sweat, creating condensation on the red back of his iPhone.

“What about?”

“What about?  _ Harry _ . About what happened, about how we parted….”

Harry interrupts him, sounding cool and calm. “Zayn, that was ages ago. I don’t think of it any more, and I’m surprised you do.”

Zayn feels his heart drop somewhere near his belly. In all his imaginings of this conversation, it never went like this.

“I’ve had all the boys out. It’s brought up the past for me. Made me think about you, about how we treated each other. Do you never think of it, really?”

Harry’s voice is smooth and without inflection. “Not really, no. I had to let go of all that negative energy. It was important in my growth, letting it go.”

_ Jesus _ . This is the Harry that Zayn can’t stand, the insufferable, pretentious twat who hung around with Kendall Jenner and thought he’d made it on the A list. The fucking git who’d made Zayn go outside to smoke and then take a shower before he got back in the bed. Why did he call him? What could this Harry ever have to offer Zayn?

“Ah yeah, the growth. I’m glad for you, then, Harry, that you’ve grown so much and you’ve no bitterness toward anything in the past. How  _ evolved _ of you.” He can’t resist the dig, but Harry doesn’t react to it.

“I didn’t say I’ve no bitterness. Of course I do. But I don’t dwell on it. It’s important to let go of what you can’t change. Zayn, don’t you agree?”

_ Happy or right. Happy or right. _

“Well, that’s the thing, Harry. I hoped that I could change some things.”

Zayn swears later than he can feel Harry hesitate. He hurries forward with his next words.

“I want things to be different between us. If nothing else, I want you to know how I feel about the things I said and did.”

Harry’s voice softens a bit, and Zayn feels his heart pick itself up and return to its proper place in his chest to hear it. “I know you regret it. I have regrets too. I never meant to hurt you. Or, well, I did, but I regret that I wanted to hurt you. I mean, I don’t walk around feeling regretful, because that would be a waste of time and energy, but if I think of it, then I know that we were both hurt--.”

“Harry. Stop, love.” Zayn hears the endearment slip out, but it’s too late to call it back, and he means it, god, he means it. “I get it, I think. If you thought of it, which you don’t, you would be sorry too.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Was that all, Zayn?” The coolness is back. What can he do to bring back soft Harry?

“No, no, that’s not all. I want to see you. May I see you, Harry?” Zayn chooses the word  _ may _ deliberately, knowing how often he assumed Harry would do what he wanted him to; Louis had convinced him of that much.

This time the pause is longer. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Zayn. I try to stay away from the things that used to upset me so. Jeffrey says--.”

“JEFFREY? What does that cunt know about me and you?” Shit. He’s not handling this well.

“And this is why, Zayn, that it’s probably not a good idea for us to see each other. You are explosive, aren’t you? Louis must have told you we saw each other, about a year ago? We were able to talk through the past, put it aside at last. But it was easier with Lou, longer ago.”

“Harry, it’s been going on for five years!”

“And yet we’re back to arguing as though it were yesterday. I don’t know. I’ll meditate on it, Zayn. That’s the best I can do. And now I have to go.”

“Wait, Harry--!” 

But the line is silent, and Harry is gone. 

Zayn stares at the screen for a minute, wondering whether to text or to let it go himself. He keeps going back and forth, thinking it was a bad idea to let the past visit his present and thinking he can’t go forward without making peace with the past. And there’s the whole matter of being in love with Harry, or maybe the idea of Harry. There’s that.

He’s standing in the driveway, still staring at the phone, when Connor comes up alongside him. “How did it go?”

“He’s going to meditate on it.” Zayn and Connor exchange looks, and then they burst out laughing. Zayn is reminded that he loves this life, that he doesn’t want the life Harry lives, not at all. Surely that is reason enough to stay away?

Zayn decides, that evening in bed as he continues the 800-page novel he had started last night in an attempt to distract himself from thoughts, wild thoughts, that he has done what he can do. Harry will meditate. He will no doubt talk to Jeff, who hates Zayn. He’ll either decide that it’s worth his time to see Zayn, or he’ll decide to stay away. Zayn rather thinks that he’ll decide to stay away, but that is the old, gloomy person. New evolved Zayn could teach Harry Styles a thing or do about serenity and accepting what he can’t change. With that self-righteous thought, Zayn turns the page and continues reading until at last he is sleepy.

He falls asleep, his last thought that maybe at least he will see Harry in his dreams.

The cottage is plumbed and wired, its gas line run and the frame wrapped in insulation before Zayn hears from Harry again. This time is a text.

_ what did you have in mind. this talk. _

Zayn thinks,  _ well, I was hoping that you would run into my arms and kiss me passionately, and then I was hoping you’d carry me to bed, where I’d end my months of celibacy in the longest marathon of sex I’ve ever had, and I was with Gigi Hadid for years _ , but then he answers simply.

_ just that we meet and we talk, and that i can tell you how i feel in person _

It seems dangerous, to talk about feelings with the man who hurt him more than anyone ever had, the man whose behavior had so enraged him that he had put his fist through the hotel wall that night in Bangkok, but by now Zayn is feeling reckless and resigned at once. He only wants to see Harry with his own eyes, to see if he’s the pretentious twat doing Gucci ads or still, somehow, his Haz. He can’t know without seeing him.

A few minutes pass. Lilia calls him down to dinner, and he calls back, “In a minute! I’m on the phone!” as though he’s answering his mum.

A one-word reply comes at last, with a ping so quiet that Zayn thinks, it sounds like nothing, like Connor is texting him he’s picking up the hardware for the cottage’s kitchen cabinets.

_ Ok _

That’s all. Just  _ ok _ . Ok then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're still here, thanks for sticking with this little fic. THESE GUYS. I cannot make them move any faster.


	10. Harry at the Farm I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _A Range Rover comes into view. No, it’s not Connor. It’s not anybody local. Zayn sets his guitar against the house, remembering that Harry always drove Range Rovers, but there’s no reason to think Harry is coming here, no reason at all._  
Still, his heart beats faster as the vehicle pulls in the drive and stops a few feet from the porch. He sees his head first, the shorter hair that still retains a bit of its curl, the pale skin, the broad shoulders. Harry. Here.
> 
>   
At last Zayn has Harry at the farm, but they won’t reveal too much to each other. Too much time, too much lost trust, too new being together.

The last time Zayn and Harry text, Harry says only,  _ im pretty busy with promo right now ill get back to you soon tho ok  _ and Zayn feels as if Harry is shrugging him off, as if he’s saying,  _ see you never _ , but there is no choice. He has already waited this long. What’s a few more weeks? Months? Years? The cottage is ready, waiting only for the habitation permit. Lilia and Susana have unpacked their things in the barn; Zayn has had furniture delivered, and he was a bit extravagant, but he knows that Susana will be here for another year, and then who knows what Lilia will do or what he’ll need. It all waits, covered, in the barn, for the permit that the inspector assured him would come through in “a few days” but has already been over a week. Ah well. He figures that his little “cottage” has cost a quarter of a million dollars, and he lives in a cheap part of the state. How does anyone build or buy any more? Once again, he’s grateful for One Direction, for all it brought him, the bitter and the sweet.

It’s Thursday. Connor didn’t come because he is sick, a rare occurrence, or actually a never occurrence. Connor is as steady and reliable as the sun every morning, showing up for his hours, giving good value for his pay, and making Zayn feel calm by his steady presence. He loves the people in his daily life. Louis had planned to come out this week and suddenly and abruptly cancelled, with no real explanation. Zayn figures it’s kid stuff, Briana stuff. It seems there is always low-key drama between them over Freddie. He’s taken an early shower, and now he’s waiting for dinner on the front porch with his guitar. He’s added guitar lessons to his regular Wednesday routine. He has Connor come for half a day until school starts, and then he won’t work on Wednesdays at all, so Zayn has time and the desire to get better.

He goes into town late afternoon, before his voice lesson in the evening, to a local music shop, where he gets lessons from Aaron, the owner, who has never heard of Zayn and wouldn’t listen to him if he had. “There’s no good music anymore. Springsteen, that’s it. The rest of those fellers can kiss my ass with their electronic this and autotune that. It’s the death of real music,” he grumbled as Zayn tuned his guitar. Watching, he had said to Zayn, grudgingly, as though he were surprised and not thrilled at all to mean it, “You’re getting a little better with your fingering, Zayn. I think you’re practicing, not like most of these young fellows.” High praise indeed from Aaron. “I’m 27, Aaron. I’m not such a young fellow,” Zayn replies.

“What? I can’t understand that accent of yours half the time. I thought you said you were 27.”

“Yeah, mate, I’m 27.”

“You look about 18 to me.” Aaron peers at him from under his bushy eyebrows. “Course, all you fellers under 30 look about 18.”

“Well, I’m 27, and I’ve learned some discipline from hanging out with blokes like you,” Zayn tells him. Aaron doesn’t reply, but Zayn can see that he’s pleased. He’s learned, hasn’t he, over his time out in the country that people aren’t just happy because he’s around. He has to do things. Speaking of which, on the way home from his guitar lesson he had brought Lilia and Susana two big bunches of lilacs, and they are presently sweetening the air all the way out on the porch. 

“Ooh, Mr. Zayn, you shouldn’t ought to spend your money on dis frivolous estuff, it’s no good for you bank account,” Lilia had said, shaking her head disapprovingly.

“But you’re my best girl, Lilia. Who else can I buy flowers for?” She laughed at him then, slapped his arm in a familiar way that gladdened him, and walked away, saying, “Oh, Mr. Zayn, you love too mush to flatter an ole lady, you should be ashamed of yourself.” She’s taking English lessons at the high school every Monday and Wednesday night; Zayn picks her up after Connor takes her. Their lives are settled. Zayn wonders if maybe Harry will never call him back again, and if that would be a bad thing. His life is peaceful just like it is.

He’s picking out a new song on the guitar, letting his hair dry, enjoying the soft autumn breeze, when he hears the gate swing open. Maybe Connor is feeling better and wants to eat with them? He stands up, squinting against the setting sun.

A Range Rover comes into view. No, it’s not Connor. It’s not anybody local. Zayn sets his guitar against the house, remembering that Harry always drove Range Rovers, but there’s no reason to think Harry is coming here, no reason at all. 

Still, his heart beats faster as the vehicle pulls in the drive and stops a few feet from the porch. He sees his head first, the shorter hair that still retains a bit of its curl, the pale skin, the broad shoulders. Harry. Here.

Still, Zayn stands on the porch, heart pounding, and then Harry is standing beside his car, looking at Zayn looking at him. For moments, it seems like an eternity but in reality can’t be more than a few seconds, they look, and Zayn thinks he will never want to stop looking and that maybe looking is better than saying. What can he say, that Harry has come all this way?

“I was staying with Xander for a few days, and I thought, well, I’m in Pennsylvania, and you’re not that far, so I chartered a plane to come here. Do you find that unbearably extravagant, Zayn?” Harry’s voice is still low and warm, his eyes still green. He still glows from within, like he always did, from the very beginning.

“I dunno, Harry. You must have lots of money now, with the two records and the second doing so well. I don’t judge how people spend their money.”

And then, God help them, he hears the screen door open, he never has oiled the hinges so it still squeaks, and Susana gasps beside him, “Holy shit! You’re Harry Styles! Sorry, Zayn, for swearing. Sorry for speaking. I mean, holy shit. Sorry. I’ll just….is he staying for dinner?”

“I dunno--Harry, will you stay for dinner?”

“I will. I was hoping to stay for the night, actually. This place isn’t that easy to find, and it’ll be dark soon.”

“Yah, everybody says the same, they always get lost. Did you get lost then? If I’d known you were coming I would have come out to meet you, saved you stressing out.”

“Ok,” Susana interrupts, “I’m going back in the house to tell Mom to set an extra place. Holy shit, holy shit. Harry, can I get a selfie with you later?”

“Susana!” Zayn protests. “NO, you cannot get a selfie with Harry. This is, like, a secret, and you can’t even tell your friends.”

“Nah,” Harry says easily, “I’ll do a selfie with anyone, like for example...?” 

“God, sorry, Harry, this is Susana, she lives here.” He starts at the look on Harry’s face. “Harry! She’s a teenager!” What is wrong with everybody right now, himself included?

Harry comes around the car and puts a foot up on the porch step and a hand out to Susana, “Hi, I’m Harry. Nice to meet you.”

Susana pumps his hand enthusiastically. “Yeah, you’re Harry, I’m Susana, and I’m going to be the coolest girl in school tomorrow with my Harry Styles selfie.”

“About that--can you wait a few days until I’ve gone before posting it. Or maybe just show your friends and not post it at all?”

Susana finally lets go of Harry’s hand. “What? Oh, yeah, of course, I get it. You’re not here.” She turns finally, shaking her head in amazement at her LIFE, and then Harry and Zayn are alone again, only now Harry is right in front of him, here, in the flesh. Zayn reminds himself that it’s still not ok, it’s still just talking, he needs to calm himself the fuck down. But Harry in the flesh is always so much more than Harry in photos, or even Harry in video. He’s so bright. And he’s talking.

“I wanted to surprise you, Zayn. And no, I didn’t get lost. Are you surprised?” Harry smiles a little at him, just a little, and it’s not a smirk, it’s full of warmth, and Zayn wants to bathe in it.

“So--shall I get my bag and come in?” Harry asks, awkwardly, when it seems clear that Zayn has lost the power of speech.

“Jesus, Hazza, I’m sorry. I’m just gobsmacked, I guess. It was so long ago that I texted you the first time, and I guess I told myself that it was fine, me never seeing you again, us never resolving our differences because that’s life, but now you’re here, on the farm, like, out of a dream, or I don’t know, just I’m really really surprised. I don’t know if I want to yell at you or just be delighted you came, to be honest.”

“Yeah, I can see you’re struggling. Can I suggest being delighted? I’m really glad to see you myself.” Harry’s voice is still like warm syrup, and between the sun setting, and Harry glowing, and his voice pouring over him, Zayn is hard pressed to pull himself into some semblance of order.

“Alright, yeah. You look great, and I’m fucking delighted to see you. I just--I wish I still smoked, because I would definitely light a cigarette right now, give meself a moment to get composed. Damn it, Harry. You always could surprise me. You always did, good and bad.”

And now they are both smiling slightly, because Zayn is looking, and he sees that Harry is, well, not unaffected by Zayn, either. Zayn can see the pulse at his neck, and it’s quick, and he can hear over the sound of his own heart that Harry might be breathing a little faster too. This feels monumental, but at least there are social niceties and other people to give them time to settle. 

“Let’s get your bag, then, yeah? In the back? If you’ll open it, I’ll grab it for ya.”

“You look like you could carry me in, Z. Since when do you have so many muscles?”

“Aha, yeah, farm work really builds them, and I’ve been working with weights too. I probably could carry you in--I can try if you like.” He makes a joking move like he’s going to carry Harry over the threshold, and Harry pulls back just a little, and then it’s awkward again. 

“I’m just messing with you. You look strong, too. I’ve noticed it in photos, that you’ve built up your upper body quite a lot.” Oops. Zayn feels the heat in his cheeks as he hears how much he’s just given away. “Yeah, alright, I keep up with ya. I can’t lie, being as I’ve already caught myself out.” The awkwardness passes with Zayn’s confession, and Harry gazes at him again, really looks.

“You’re different, too, Zayn. It’s not just the muscles. I thought so when you texted me, but I didn’t want to trust it. I can see you’re much healthier, yeah? More settled. The farm life is good for you.”

“Yeah, Haz, it is. It’s really good. Come meet Lilia, Susana’s mum, and then we’ll take your bag--” Shit, where would they take his bag? Damn that permit. “Ok, you’re going to think I’m, like, trying to seduce you or something, but I swear, I only have two functioning bedrooms right now, and Lilia and Susana are in one. But look, you can sleep in my room, and I’ll sleep on the sofa. I haven’t changed--I can still sleep anywhere.”

“Yeah, we learned that early on, didn’t we, Z. I can sleep anywhere, too. I’ll just sleep on the sofa. I’m not going to put you out, just showing up like this. Or I don’t mind sharing a bed. It’s not like we’ve not done it plenty of times.”

“No,” Zayn replies firmly, “that’s not ok at all. You’ll take my room, alone, and that’s all there is to be said about it.” And with that, he goes to the back of the Rover, waits while Harry clicks the latch, and takes the very fancy and very retro Gucci bag upstairs to his room, over Harry’s protests.

Harry is so good with people, Zayn thinks, as he watches him charm Lilia in a way that took Zayn months and months. He really listens, and he laughs at all the right places, and he’s famous but doesn’t act like it, getting up to refill all the waters and clearing the table. He shoos Lilia and Susana out of the kitchen when they’ve finished the meal, saying that of course he and Zayn will do the dishes, how could Lilia think otherwise? And Zayn has been letting Lilia do the dishes for months. 

“So. Shall I wash and you dry, Z? Or do you just load the dishwasher? How do things work out here on the farm?” 

“Harry. You’ve made me look a right shit in front of Lilia. I never offer to wash up, and you show up and just, you’re so fucking charming. I forget how charming. Also, if you care to notice, I don’t even have a dishwasher. That’s always been Lilia.” His words are a little harsh, but his tone isn’t, and he’s laughing at Harry as they finish clearing the table. 

“Maybe I just want an excuse to stand next to you, Z. You were always fit, but now you’re next level. You should do underwear ads.” Harry’s tone is flirtatious, and Zayn thinks that since Harry arrived they have been flirting this whole time. The feelings are all still there, have been lying in wait like a fox outside a henhouse. Now they’ve pounced.

“What, like Liam?” They exchange knowing glances. Well. Maybe that’s not a good conversational path, although it’s good to see they can still read each other this easily.

“Thanks for the compliment, but I’m not doing anything that puts me back in the public eye, Harry. I can go into town, and nobody there gives a shit about seeing me. It’s just Zayn, that eccentric guy trying to make a go of farming. Everybody in these parts wants to quit farming, and here I am trying to take it up. If I weren’t British, they’d have me committed.”

“I doubt you’re just that eccentric guy trying to farm. Don’t kid yourself. So, no desire to make music? To perform?” 

“Ah, I dunno. I think about it sometimes, but then I think, my life is good here, settled like, and the people who care about me care about me, not that I’m famous. Ah, that sounds wrong, Harry, I didn’t mean nothing about you. You’re lovable, always have been.” That definitely was flirting.

Harry looks down at the dirty plate in his hand as he waits for the sink to fill up. When he answers, it’s seriously. “No, not always, was I. I think maybe now isn’t the time, but at some point I guess I want to talk, too, about what happened, about how we parted. I regret a lot of it. I’ve had plenty of time to think since you texted me first.”

“No, probably not now. Lilia and Susana have their own cottage--did you see it out back? They’ll be moving into it as soon as the permit comes through, and then, maybe you would come back? Or I could come to London? Or New York? I like seeing you.” And before he starts sounding like a lovesick fool, Zayn adds, “I’ve loved seeing everyone. Niall was first, you know. He’s a trendsetter, that one.”

The moment passes. They stand shoulder to shoulder at the sink, and there is an easy rhythm to their actions, as Harry hands the sudsy dishes off to Zayn to rinse and dry, stacking them neatly on the counter next to the sink. The sun sets, and Zayn thinks that it’s a good thing he put the animals in early because Connor was gone. There’s nothing to distract him from having Harry here, with him.

“Mr. Zayn, Susana wants to know can she borrow the truck? She thought she might go get ice cream for everbody.” Lilia sticks her head in the kitchen, nodding approvingly at the clean table and growing stack of clean dishes on the counter. “And I not tryin’ to tell you how to do the dishes, cos I know you done it sometime in your life, but don’ forget to wipe the stove.”

Zayn and Harry laugh at this, as Zayn fishes the keys out of his pocket. “Harry, what flavor do you want? We usually get pecan praline and something plainer, like chocolate or vanilla. Or do you eat sweets at all now?”

“Yeah, I’ll have some ice cream. Should we go and get it?”

“Nah, let Susana. I think if you go somebody will recognize you. Better to stay here out of sight, yeah?”

Harry agrees, and then they go out on the porch, inviting Lilia to join them, which she surprises Zayn by doing. She talks openly to Harry about her life in Honduras, about her husband and not knowing where he is, about Susana and her hopes for her, and once again Zayn is reminded of how charming Harry is, how easily people open up to him. It was the source of one of their problems, only one, but a problem for Zayn. He had been jealous; he can admit it now all these years later.

He and Lilia surprise themselves by how late it gets, once Susana returns with half pints of ice cream, one for each of them, and then Harry asks Susana questions, and the talk is relaxed and comfortable. Susana gets bored of them finally and goes inside, but the three of them talk and talk.

Finally Lilia squints at her watch and exclaims, “Oi, Harry Estyles, you make me talk too mush. Híjole, ees gonna be early the morning. Ya me voy a la cama, and gracias for listening. Qué caballero eres tú, such a gentleman.” Zayn thinks she’s so tired that she doesn’t know how much Spanish has crept in to her communication, and this too is charming. Harry hugs her good night, and says seriously, “Gracias, Lilia. La comida fue muy rica,” and Lilia repeats, “Qué caballero eres tú. Por nada, guapo.” With that, she leaves them, and Harry sits back in his rocker with a sigh. 

“It’s been a lovely evening, Zayn. May I see the farm in the morning?”

“Long as you don’t mind getting up early.”

“I’m still an early riser, Zee. You’ll be up, what, around noon?”

Zayn starts to defend his dignity and new habits when he notices the twinkle in Harry’s eyes. They produce a nostalgia so profound that he has to control the desire to ask if he can kiss Harry. Such a dangerous feeling, nostalgia. Better to get used to a return of warmth between them. Instead, then, he flings an arm across Harry’s shoulders as he used to always do before saying, “Right then, let me explain the quirks of an old farmhouse to you. The water takes forever to heat, and sometimes you have to jiggle the handle of the toilet to get it to stop running…”

Once he’s in his fleece pj bottoms, a blanket over him on the couch, listening to Harry’s light steps as he moves about upstairs getting ready for bed, he’s glad he thought better of his impulses toward anything more than this slow and easy approach to re-learning each other. It’s enough that Harry is here, in the house, and that he’ll be here in the morning when Zayn wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They are at last in the same time zone and the same geographic coordinates. Progress.


	11. Zayn and Harry at the Farm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Later, Zayn will recall the morning in a series of images: Harry, shirtless and hair mussed, wandering half awake into the kitchen as the coffee brews, Harry, reaching out tentatively to stroke Mandarin’s nose, Harry, eyes widening when the goats come running for their treats, Harry, shoulders hunched forward and hands in his hoodie as Zayn explains his plans for the farm, Harry, touching his arm with his delicate long fingers, and then Harry, lips pursed and eyes narrowed as they fall through the trapdoor of past hurts and begin, at last, to have it out._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major angst warning. Revised Sunday, October 6, for additional angst.

When Zayn awakens, his first thought is that he needs to hire a lawyer for Lilia, needs to try to find her husband. His second is that Harry is here, and he sighs in contentment. He actually debates, looking at himself in the mirror over the buffet in the dining room, whether he should wear a tight tee shirt over his flannel pj bottoms, show up his new muscles, preen a bit, or if he should wear one of the oversized sweaters that always drew Harry’s hands up his bare back, as though he needed to remind himself that Zayn was under all that extra wool. He brought both downstairs. He decides to show off a bit.

He goes toward the kitchen and the smell of bread frying. Lilia is waxing the tables in the living room. She rolls her eyes at Zayn. “He’s in there making breakfas’, your Harry. I tole him I always make the breakfas’ but he say no, he gonna do it!” Even though she turns away muttering something in Spanish, Zayn can tell she’s play mad. He goes in the kitchen, and he does something he hasn’t done in, what, six years? Harry is at the stove, shirtless, displaying his broad muscular back, its muscles flexing as he dips bread in batter and adds it to the two pans he’s got going. He’s making French toast, one of the first things he ever learned to cook. Zayn can’t help himself; he goes to him, sets his chin into Harry’s shoulder, says, “Morning, Haz. I can’t remember the last time I had your French toast, but it smells great.” 

It’s bold, Zayn thinks, to set his scratchy chin against Harry’s bare shoulder, to look down at pecs the likes of which he’s never seen on him, to breathe in the smell of him, presently unwashed but sweet. He and Harry had always liked each other’s natural smell. They could go a couple of days without showering, and while Harry always hated the smell of cigarettes on Zayn, he loved his natural odor, would bury his nose in Zayn’s armpit until Zayn pushed him away, laughing: “Harry, you’re disgusting. I stink. Haven’t had a shower in days because you never let me out of bed long enough.” Today, this morning, in Zayn’s kitchen at the farm, for just a moment, Harry reaches an arm up to caress Zayn’s hair. “I’m earning my keep, yeah? Saying sorry for just barging in.” His voice is still sleep-sexy, and Zayn moves away before his body responds. 

“Aren’t you cold, Haz? Shall I get you a jumper or summat?”

“Yeah, actually. Do you have something I could wear? Something big on you?

He remembers a hundred times when he and Harry would grab whatever was closest, when it didn’t matter whose tee shirt it was, or whose jumper or coat, when they didn’t have physical boundaries at all. Harry sticking his finger in Zayn’s nose during a photo shoot, touching his face while Zayn was speaking in an interview, the whispering on stage. He remembers being unable to keep his hands off Harry, years of it. 

“I do. I almost wore it meself. Let me go get it.” He goes to the downstairs coat closet, gets the red sweater that Harry used to like and that smells of Zayn now, takes it to the kitchen, and eases it over Harry’s head. “Heyyy,” Harry protests, “my hands aren’t free!”

“Give the spatula, then. I can make French toast too, ya know.”

And this is Zayn, and this is Harry, in the kitchen, first thing on Harry’s first morning on the farm. Zayn feels hope in his heart; he can’t help it. It is his nature to anger easily but to forgive easily, he thinks. It’s alright with Harry. Maybe they don’t even need to talk about the past.

Susana wanders downstairs in time for breakfast, and she gushes again, “Harry Styles is making my breakfast right now! I can’t believe it. Can you just move in with us?” And then when she sees the look that passes between Zayn and Harry, “I’m just kidding, but I love French toast. Mami says it’s too sweet, but this is a special occasion, right? We can eat whatever we like.”

It seems at first like it will be a perfect day. The sky is the blue of a crisp fall day, and Harry has brought old blue jeans, a long sleeve vintage Led Zeppelin tee, and a coat that looks like he picked it up at a thrift shop on the way in. His Gucci trainers will get dirty, but Harry works for them. Surely they supply him with as many pair as he can wear around the world, building the brand. For himself, Zayn doesn’t do any of that any more. He wishes he could, because the money is obscene, but alas, Versace doesn’t want a farmer in its ads. 

They go out, Stitch following. Zayn offers a bicycle, but Harry says he’d rather walk. “It’s so lovely to know that I can walk for an hour and not have to stop to take a pic with a fan. I mean, I love them, but--”

“Stop, Harry. We’re not doing an interview. They were a pain in the ass for all of us once, and then it was mostly just for you, but you asked for it, didn’t you, by doing all that Gucci bullshit and going to all those industry parties, and being friends with all those rich assholes.”

“Do you judge me for how I live, Zee?” Harry has stopped on the dirt path heading toward the corn fields. Zayn is going to use the roto-tiller to grind the corn residue into a soft powder, and he plans for Harry to go behind him with a rake, lightly mixing the powder into the soil as fertilizer. 

Zayn stops, too. He considers seriously Harry’s question, the way he always has when Harry asks him something. Whether or not he’s judging Harry’s life, given the disconnect between the public Harry and the private man that Zayn can feel after less than one day. “I don’t think so. I’m jealous of the past, I think. Those days when I wanted you and you weren’t there. But I’ve always supported you doing whatever you wanted to, I think.”

Harry starts walking again, dragging the rake over bumps in the path. He will avoid confrontation, Harry will. He won’t talk about it. Zayn isn’t mad about that. He never wanted to talk things through either, in those days, but therapy and time away have made him less taciturn. They had always used sex to communicate, but now he finds he wants to talk, and maybe it isn’t to throw himself at Harry’s feet, begging for forgiveness, no matter how much he always liked Harry’s feet, or how hard he is resisting wanting to touch him, with intent.

And so, he will till the corn fields, beginning to lose himself a little in the past, and Harry will go behind him with a rake, both wearing masks against the clouds of powdery corn residue the tiller is kicking up into the dry air, and then after a couple of hours of sweating in the fields, Harry will ask for a break, and they’ll sit in the middle of the field because there’s nowhere else, catching their breath.

Zayn squints at the sky over their heads. “It’s so nice seeing the sun after September, innit, Harry? London is so dreary.”

“It’s why I stay busy, doing things and working out, and whatnot. Helps me forget the weather.” Harry grins at him, maybe making a slight dig at Zayn, since Zayn isn’t sure he was convincing about not judging Harry. He really doesn’t though. Not about that stuff.

“We should stop working. Let’s play guitars on the porch. I want to play you a couple of songs. I’ve got one Niall helped me with. It’s not so R&B as I usually like, more acoustic. I’ve been playing guitar a lot more, taking lessons and getting better.”

“Have you, Zee? I’m too fucking lazy, aren’t I? I’m kind of shit at guitar.”

“You have other talents, though, yeah? Like being charming. I never could. People always think I’m mad, even when I’m just having a think.”

Harry laughs. “It’s true, Zayn! You’ve got resting broody face. It’s such a pretty face, but you always look like this.” Harry does his best Zayn imitation, and it makes Zayn laugh, it’s so spot on. Harry always could imitate him, but it was never mean-spirited. It never was.

“Let’s go then, Haz. You can be sat somewhere mad as anything, and you’ll look like sunshine on a stick. It used to piss me off right proper how people would think you were so fucking cheerful, but it’s just the way your face hangs.”

“See--jealous. I knew it. Jealous and judgy.”

They might be flirting again, a little. Zayn isn’t sure how he feels about it, but anyway they’ll get back to the house, and he’ll get a guitar in his hands, and then he’ll sing. He always feels right when he sings.

Harry likes the song. He asks Zayn what he’s going to do with it, says it could be on the radio. “I’ll probably just post it to YouTube or summat. I don’t have a label to promote me, nor a manager, nor nought else I need to do music professionally.”

“That’s just stupid, Zayn. I used to look at you and think, here’s this man, he’s so beautiful physically, and he’s so kind and sweet to the people he loves, and he has the voice of an angel, but he’s so self-destructive. He’s going to ruin his own chances, just watch. And that’s what you did.”

“Maybe I didn’t want to be famous, Harry. Did you ever think of that? Maybe I don’t like being papped every time I walk out the door, or giving the same interview over and over to people who know nothing about me or my music. Maybe I don’t like hiding who I am any more than I do already.”

“I don’t hide who I am,” Harry says quietly.

“Don’t you then? Was the thing with Camille real?”

“Yeah, it was. I actually loved her. She hurt me a lot.”

“Alright, but before that, how many relationships with women were real? I don’t mean fucking them, I mean loving them.”

“Why are you asking me this? Who have you loved besides Gigi?”

Zayn almost says, “You,” but he stops his stupid mouth just in time. Instead he just stares at Harry. “When you’re at a party, Harry, and you’re looking around, admiring what you see, tell me: do you look at men more, or women more?”

Harry shakes his head. “You know the answer. Why are you asking me this? We both were the same. We liked fucking. We liked fucking everyone. We liked fucking each other. We liked it all until it got complicated.”

Zayn feels tense, then. He remembers well all the fucking, and how it started to be the two of them, fucking girls in the same room, and how they stopped bothering with the girls. And how he thought at some point that Harry had stopped bothering with the boys, too.

The past is never really the past. We can close the door on it, but it has a key. It will be patient. It will play the long game. And then it will reach out its cold hand and wrap it around your throat.

They’ll sit on the porch, and for a while Harry and Zayn will be silent. But Zayn, who has kept his memories at bay by working hard, by starting over, by avoiding everything that reminded him of those days, will be lost in remembering.

Zayn will wish for a cigarette, and while he’s wishing, Harry will run his fingers up Zayn’s arm, under his coat, and he’ll remember Louis saying that Harry used to do this to him, and how it used to give him a boner. It will seem calculated, in the way Harry always had, of distracting him with touch. For Zayn, it will strike a discordant note in what has been a mostly friendly and not so archly flirtatious day. It will seem that Harry is using his considerable sex appeal on Zayn, the way he used to when he wanted Zayn to stop sulking and just fuck until he wasn’t mad any more. He doesn’t want it. He remembers feeling used back then, like Harry was treating him like anyone, charming him into doing his will the way he did with everyone.

Harry says something, Zayn answers in a monosyllable. This happens again, then again. Something is building in him, something stronger than his desire to let the past be the past, something therapy didn’t get to and Gigi didn’t heal. And then Harry asks, “What’s wrong, Zayn?” And then the visit that started off so promisingly will go off the rails.

Later, Zayn will recall the day in a series of images: Harry, shirtless and hair mussed, half awake in the kitchen as the coffee brews, Harry, reaching out tentatively to stroke Mandarin’s nose, Harry, eyes widening when the goats come running for their treats, Harry, shoulders hunched forward and hands in his hoodie as Zayn explains his plans for the farm, Harry raking, the mask covering his pretty mouth but revealing his expressive eyes, Harry, asking his questions, saying the things that make Zayn remember, Harry, touching his arm with his delicate long fingers, and then Harry, lips pursed and eyes narrowed as they fall through the trapdoor of past hurts and begin, at last, to have it out.

And then the images fade into words, loud enough that Stitch runs under the truck in the driveway to escape them and Zayn wishes he could follow, harsh enough that they bring Lilia to the door, cruel enough that both of them will grimace as they echo off buildings and across the driveway. They are somehow shouting at each other, and the words are meant to hurt the way only they know how.

“You were a selfish prick. You said I should be patient, but I never came first for you, not even second. You let me wait for you while you paraded around with Perrie, and then you left me without a word of explanation!”

“You fucked Ben! You made sure I knew about it, didn’t you--you waited for me to get back to the hotel, you made sure your room shared a headboard with mine, you moaned his name. You moaned his name, Harry, so I would know who it was you were with. I can never forgive you for that. I would understand if you had been in love with him--”

“Right, and because you were ‘in love’ with Perrie that makes everything okay, when you knew who you really loved, I knew it in my heart, I knew you felt everything I felt, but you were so weak you let Simon cook up that little PR stunt. It didn’t even help us. It  _ hurt _ the band, and it hurt  _ me _ , but you didn’t have the balls to stand up to him, just like you don’t have the balls to stand up to your father. You could never let Yaser think he had a gay son!”

And then Zayn’s hand, on its own, swings up from his side and slaps Harry, hard, across the cheek. 

“Never mention my father, you self-righteous cunt. You, with your daddy issues and your draping yourself all over every man in the room with gray hair. ‘That slag Harry will rub himself off against anyone, just get a couple of shots in him.’ I heard that in the loo at Heaven, you worthless shit. That’s what people were saying about you behind your back! Everybody knew, Harry. Everybody knew you’d fuck anybody. They just had to buy you a drink.” 

Harry’s gaze is so clear and direct, as he directs his most lethal weapon at Zayn, the one he always uses when cornered: his honesty. “That’s mean, even if it’s true. I would have come out for you. I would have left the band for you. All you ever had to do was ask. But you didn’t, did you, Zayn. And now you want to hit me, so you’ll feel like a man.” His voice is so calm as it stabs into Zayn’s heart. He fights back, in the way working-class boys will, with whatever weapons are to hand.

“I never wanted you, Harry. You were just a good fuck. Don’t kid yourself that it was something more.”

Zayn has come to this, to lying just to hurt Harry, and he’s been successful. The words hang in the air, toxic, hateful, destructive.

A last image: Harry’s stricken face, eyes filling, and then his back as he is there and then gone, screen door slamming behind him, and five minutes later, no more, Harry is back out the door, still squeaking on the hinges that Zayn apparently cannot remember to oil, because he can’t be trusted with anything or anyone, he can’t take care of things, and Harry is gone, with his ridiculous, retro Gucci bag swinging as he hurls himself into his car, backs up into the lavender, and leaves Zayn, with so much ammunition left unfired, so many words he might have said, and none of them  _ i’m sorry _ , none of them  _ forgive me _ , none of them  _ i love you _ .

Zayn won’t remember Lilia coming out to the drive to guide him into the house, or any part of the rest of that day, only that he is spent, numb, not even sorry or sad. Just fuck Harry Styles. They never spoke. Zayn said it himself in that interview. They never had a relationship, and now they never will.

Sometime later, he will realize that he’s been sat on the porch for at least an hour. He’ll rise, back aching, knees cracking, and go out to help Connor bring the goats in and put the hens up in the coop. He’ll find Stitch, sensitive little fellow that he is, huddled inside the horse barn, trembling. He’ll pick him up, soothe him with a lullaby he used to sing for Harry when he couldn’t sleep, and then the magnitude of what happened will force its way into his consciousness. He’ll sob once, drily, and then he’ll take Stitch inside to feed him, he’ll listen and nod as Lilia says that the permit of habitation was in the day’s mail, he’ll sit at the table and eat something tasteless.

The days will get shorter and the winds more biting. Connor will pester him into hiring all the other out buildings painted. They will work to prepare the farm for winter, and then it will start snowing. Lilia will go to South Texas to meet an immigration lawyer who has found where her husband is being detained. Susana will stay in the house with Zayn, doing her homework at the kitchen table, chattering about her life, and keeping Zayn from becoming morose and melancholy and maudlin for want of Harry, who won’t communicate. Connor will fall in love with Stephen, and he will seem happy, and his parents will surprise Zayn by being fine with it. Zayn will wonder if his own parents might not mind if he came out to them, but he won’t test it. For the first time in ages he won’t go home for Christmas. Instead, he’ll write songs in which he pleads  _ I’m sorry, forgive me, I love you _ .

Niall visits. Louis visits twice. It snows all through February and well into March. Life at the farm goes on, with animals needing to be tended and fields prepped and repairs made. The rhythms of farm life are the same, no matter the condition of Zayn’s heart.

Louis only mentions Harry once. He has seen him in London, in early December, he says, at his Hampstead house. He had circles under his eyes, Louis says. His hair was greasy, and he’d lost weight. He didn’t mention Zayn, and Louis hadn’t brought him up. Zayn says nothing. He thinks that he will call Harry, but when he picks up his phone he imagines that the number will have changed, and he can’t bear the thought.

Finally, when the tulips are above ground and Lilia is back home with Jorge, a temporary work visa secured, Zayn decides to go to London. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zayn is going to London, back to where it all begin. He's going to see Harry, and he's going to try one more time, because they deserve to be happy. And that's it.


	12. Zayn in London

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What do you want from me, Zayn?” Harry’s voice is barely above a whisper, and Zayn thinks wildly that he has to get this right, he has to say something true, something real, if it kills him, even if it kills him, and then he scolds himself for being melodramatic.
> 
> “I want us to be friends again. I want you not to be mad at me any more.” He feels Harry’s fingers sink into his shoulders again and then move lightly down his bare upper arms. He shivers.
> 
> “That’s easy. Done.” Harry pats him then, and starts to pull him up onto the sofa. He lets himself be pulled so he can turn and look at Harry’s face. The little crease is gone, but there’s still a cloud in Harry’s eyes, and Zayn thinks he would like to chase it away but doesn’t know how.
> 
> Zayn's come to London, but now he's here he doesn't quite know what to do next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild spoilers for Season 2 of _Fleabag_. Hot Priest, don't you know.

The gate to Harry’s estate swings open suddenly, prompting a panicked call to Louis.

“Fuck me, Louis, the gate is opening! D’ya think he’s leaving? What’s going ON?”

“I told him you were waiting outside in the lane,” Louis replies calmly. 

“You did WHAT?”

“Mate, you’ve texted me three times in the last thirty minutes whilst you’ve been sitting there in that car. You told me last time that your driver needed you to get out and what should you do. I took matters into me own hands, didn’t I? You can thank me later.”

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Zayn’s palms are sweating so much that he can barely hold the phone, so he just swears at Louis one last time and hangs up. He digs out a twenty pound note from his pocket, crumpled up and damp, pushes it through the sliding glass window, and staggers out. He looks drunk, he imagines.

The house is set back behind hedges, at the end of a quiet lane in Hampstead Heath. The gate has stopped creaking open and now stands wide for Zayn like a dare. Nothing to do but walk up the drive then. 

There’s a light on over the stoop. Zayn rings the doorbell and hears the echo of it inside. He waits, long enough that he notices he’s hyperventilating and intentionally slows down his breathing. Let the wheel turn. Round and round. He’s not that important. He’s almost settled himself when at last the door opens.

Harry is wearing track pants and a plain black tee. His feet are bare; his hair is wet. He looks tired, as Louis has been saying for weeks, but his expression shows nothing. For a moment, time stops and neither man speaks. 

Finally Harry gives in. He’s always been the first one to break. “I suppose you’ll want to come in. Come on then.” He gestures for Zayn to enter and waits, holding the door while Zayn scoots past him nervously.

“Tea?”

“What?”

“I said, do you want tea?”

“Right. Maybe, water, if you have it?” For fuck’s sake, he’s asking if Harry has _ water _, like a house wouldn’t have water. He winces in spite of himself.

Harry smiles a bit at his expression. “Yeah, Zayn, I have water. I’ve got all the mod cons, you’d be amazed. I was watching telly--just follow the noise, and I’ll be back there in a minute.” He turns away, and a minute later Zayn hears the gate closing outside.

Zayn heads toward the lit room at the back of the house. It’s big, this house, bigger by far than Zayn’s little farmhouse with its two bedrooms and a study. There’s only a dim light in the hallway to guide him, and it feels an age before he’s in the room where Harry clearly spends much of his time. The telly is on Amazon Prime, paused on _ Fleabag, _season two, with the hot priest. It’s episode four, where the priest tells Fleabag to kneel. God, it’s so hot.

French doors with translucent shades reveal pool lights and a pool house in the same brick as the house exterior. There is grass, lush and green, but Zayn can’t see much else. It looks much more lived in than anywhere he’s ever known Harry to live before. There are loungers, and Zayn can see from the pool lights that the pool house has furniture in it. So, a guest house. Could he stay in it? Would Harry ask him to?

Harry’s slippers rest carelessly under the coffee table, and four magazines with himself on the cover are spread slightly at one end. The sofa looks plush and comfy in a soft floral print with a faint sheen that the walls, a soft yellow, pick up. Harry always did have a good sofa. 

Zayn hesitates for a minute. Sofa? It’ll look like he’s making himself to home. Chair? Too stiff and formal? He shrugs slightly and notices that the pain in his right shoulder, from lifting bags of chicken feed out of the supply shed and onto a wheelbarrow to be poured into the metal bin by the coop, has worsened from the long flight and drive from the airport. It’s quite stiff now. He stands for a moment, rubbing his left hand into the muscle indecisively and wondering if he smells bad when Harry returns.

“Here’s water,” Harry says, handing him a glass. “Sit.” He motions, but Zayn can’t tell if he’s meant to sit on the sofa or in the chair next to it, so he waits until finally Harry pats the sofa cushion next to him. “Sit, Zayn. I let you in. I’m not going to bite you now you’re here.”

Zayn sits on the edge of the sofa. He’s stashed his bag on the drive next to the front stoop. He has no idea what to say nor what he’s to do if they start yelling at each other and he has to leave suddenly.

“How are you?” he settles on finally. _ How are you. That was what he had to think about to say. _

“I’ve been a bit shit. You?” 

Zayn looks at Harry then, for the first time really, and he sees that he has a spot on his forehead and that his eyes look red. Harry always smells great, but maybe not quite as great as usual? It doesn’t matter. “I’ve been a bit shit, too.”

Zayn takes a drink of his water and sets the glass carefully on the coffee table. He doesn’t know where to start, with the talking that he’s come to do. He looks at the frozen image of Fleabag in the confessional. “Had you never seen this before?”

“Yeah, I’ve watched it before, a couple of times. You know how I am.”

“The priest is hot.”

“They call him Hot Priest for a reason. I’ve met him, Andrew Scott. He’s quite wee.”

“I’m wee too. You never minded that.” Zayn grimaces again and rubs his shoulder.

“Why are you rubbing your shoulder? You were doing that when I came in with your water.”

“Ah, I just strained it or summat. I was carrying bags of chicken feed to the food bin right before I left. Not being careful of how I was lifting.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Yeah, a bit. I haven’t had time to work it out, what with driving into Pittsburgh and then getting on a plane to come here.”

“Shall I massage it, then?” 

“What?”

“Jesus, Zayn. Shall I massage it for you? I always did that. I always--.” Harry stops mid-sentence, the little furrow between his brows creasing, and Zayn thinks suddenly that he’ll kiss away the wrinkle there, that he can make Harry happy if only he does that one thing.

“I can’t ask you to do that. I said terrible things to you.”

“I said terrible things back,” Harry says matter-of-factly. “It doesn’t mean your shoulder doesn’t hurt, nor that I can’t make it better. You know I’ve got strong hands. Take off your hoodie”

Zayn’s eyes are drawn in spite of himself to Harry’s hands, the delicacy and size of them, the way Harry always pinches his lower lip between his left thumb and forefinger. He makes you look. Harry does. He makes you.

Now Harry is moving the coffee table out of the way, and he’s taking Zayn’s right hand in his left and gently guiding him to the floor. Zayn goes, pulling his hoodie over his head as he sinks to the ground. He tenses as he feels Harry scoot himself to the edge of the sofa behind him and plant a hand on each shoulder before gently squeezing them, and then Zayn allows himself to be handled. 

Harry always can gentle him with touch. He’s always done. Fifteen minutes pass, and they don’t speak, the only sound in the room the soft swish of Harry’s hands against the cotton of Zayn’s tee and an occasional involuntary grunt when Harry hits a sore spot. It ends too soon.

“Better now?”

He nods and leans back against Harry’s comfy sofa, Harry’s legs are on either side of him, his hands resting lightly again on his shoulders, his feet, with their slightly gnarled toes from all those years of Chelsea boots, still bare and vulnerable on either side of his hips. “I wanted to say sorry,” he says, finally. “I didn’t mean all what I said, back at the farm.”

“I think you did, Zayn,” Harry says quietly. 

“I’m sorry that I meant those things, then,” Zayn answers. “I’m sorry that I’m such an arsehole. I’m sorry that I left, I’m sorry that I made things difficult for you.” _ I’m sorry I got engaged without telling you _ , he wants to say, but that’s stupid, they were never more than friends with benefits, he didn’t owe that to Harry. _ I’m sorry I didn’t appreciate you _ , he wants to say. _ I’m sorry that I stopped touching you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry _.

“What do you want from me, Zayn?” Harry’s voice is barely above a whisper, and Zayn thinks wildly that he has to get this right, he has to say something true, something real, if it kills him, even if it kills him, and then he scolds himself for being melodramatic.

“I want us to be friends again. I want you not to be mad at me any more.” He feels Harry’s fingers sink into his shoulders again and then move lightly down his bare upper arms. He shivers.

“That’s easy. Done.” Harry pats him then, and starts to pull him up onto the sofa. He lets himself be pulled so he can turn and look at Harry’s face. The little crease is gone, but there’s still a cloud in Harry’s eyes, and Zayn thinks he would like to chase it away but doesn’t know how. “Where are you staying?”

“With Louis. I mean, my bag’s out in the hedge.” Zayn grins helplessly and shakes his head. “I can call an Uber.”

“Just stay here tonight. Text Louis and tell him you’re staying here.”

“He’d love it. He’s been having a great time acting like me mum these last few months, telling me everything you’re doing and how you’ve looked sad.” 

“I know,” Harry says with a snort. “He’s been saying the same to me. He misses being in the thick of it, doesn’t he?”

For a moment, they smile at each other, thinking the same, Louis and his meddling, his always thinking he knows what you should do.

“Could we watch the rest of Season 2?”

“Of course, Zee. We can lust over Hot Priest together.”

“I don’t lust over him. I just find it interesting how you lot manage to combine desire and spirituality. Like, I can’t imagine lusting over my imam. They’re always old and wise, not like priests who look barely out of uni half the time.”

“Wow, I don’t even know where to start unpacking that comment. ‘You lot’ and why would desire and spirituality be necessarily separate. I mean, Mary Magdalene washes Jesus’ feet. It’s very sexy. Look at the art depicting Jesus. He’s always quite fit.”

They laugh, and for a minute it’s like five years haven’t passed, and they’re boys again, sharing a hotel room and giggling with each other, touching each other in the dark.

They rewind to the start of the confessional scene, wait for The Moment, and then Harry says, a little breathlessly, “Every time I watch this I think this time she’s going to grab him, unzip his fly, and just suck him off, right there in the confessional.”

“Nah Haz, it’s not about being transgressive, it’s about doing something to get out of your own head—.”

“Shut up, Zayn. It’s my fantasy.” Harry looks over at Zayn, and Zayn sees the sleepy look of desire in Harry’s eyes, and he looks away quickly.

They watch through the end of Season 2, and Zayn finds himself unconsciously rubbing his shoulder again.

“Still hurting? Turn around then, and let me massage it some more.”

“Nah, that’s alright, I’m good, you don’t need to do anything.”

“Give, Zee.” Harry’s voice is soft but has the little bit of steel that Zayn loves, so he does it, he turns away and then leans back into the strangeness of how hard and muscular Harry’s torso is now, how manly it feels against Zayn’s back, and then Harry’s hands are on him, digging into the muscle and pressing the firm heel of his hand into his neck, pushing his head down until his chin hits his chest. He groans; it feels so good.

And then he feels a different hardness pressing into the base of his spine. Harry is erect, and he doesn’t mind that Zayn knows. He even grinds his groin up and into Zayn’s back, letting out a groan of his own. This is too much, and Zayn tosses Harry’s hands away from him, springs up from the comfortable sofa and Harry’s hard body, and mutters, “I have to go.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Zayn, stop acting like a blushing schoolgirl. I don’t have to get off just because I get hard. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

Even though Harry’s made Zayn feel foolish, he says with more force, “No, it’s late and I should get to Louis’s. He’ll be expecting me, and I never texted to say I wasn’t coming. I’ll just wait outside for the Uber.”

Harry gets ahead of him somehow, in his rush to the door. He’s standing there, smiling as though it’s all a great joke, and then he takes Zayn’s hand and places it on his hard cock. “But here’s the trouble, Zayn. I want you. I always wanted you. Even when I loved Louis I wanted you. Even when you got engaged. Even when you left and you said that horrible thing about me. Even when we fought. Especially when we fought.”

“When I sped out of your drive, last fall at the farm, my dick was hard, just like this.”

Zayn dares to lock eyes with him now, because he’s not allowed to say these things, transgressive things, not any more, but he sees the glazed look in Harry’s eyes, and he thinks Harry isn’t really talking to him now. He’s in his own confessional, and Zayn doesn’t stick around to see what he’s going to do. Why is Harry always like this, always just saying whatever is on his mind? 

Louis’s neighborhood is less posh, filled with McMansions on smaller lots, one after another. There are security cameras, Zayn can see them, but no gated entry. He pays the Uber driver, grabs his bag out of the boot, and heads up to the front door. There’s only a small yard in front, nothing like Harry’s vast expanse and circular drive.

He lifts a hand to ring the bell, but Louis is already opening it, arms out. “Zayn! Mate! I was just coming out to smoke and saw you paying your driver. Back already from Harry’s? Tell Uncle Lou everything. EL! I’M GOING OUT TO SMOKE! ZAYN’S HERE!” Zayn winces. Louis is so _ loud._

“Here, I’ll throw your bag inside the front hall, then we’ll go smoke around the side yard. Eleanor made me quit smoking inside a year ago. Bitch,” he says quietly then makes a face at Zayn. “Not really. I smoke less this way.”

“I don’t smoke at all, Lou.”

“That’s right, I completely forgot! Never mind. Come with me and tell me everything.”

And so Zayn does, most of it. He leaves out how Harry put Zayn’s hand on him, and how he left it there for those crucial seconds. He doesn’t say the last thing Harry told him. He doesn’t say how it makes him feel.

They’re sat in Louis’s side garden, which is a fancy name for a brick terrace with a half hedge around it that looks directly into the neighbor’s kitchen. Louis takes a deep drag off his cigarette, and Zayn is sorely tempted to ask for a drag at least. (No, Zayn! Your _ instrument _! He can hear Hedda now.) “Well,” Louis is saying, “I think it’s quite simple really. Are you going back over there?”

“I dunno. I don’t think I can!”

“Course you can. You go when invited, and then right before you leave London, invited or not, you shag him.”

“Are you mental, Lou? I can’t shag Harry. We’re not even friends, much less lovers.” 

“I think we both know that it’s not for want of trying. And anyway, I have it on good authority,” Louis taps the side of his nose meaningfully, “that these days our Haz is a devil in between those sheets.”

“Have you--I thought you said…wait.”

“Exactly! 'Still the only one who’s been in love with me?'”

Zayn can’t help himself; he laughs out loud for the first time since his plane touched down at Gatwick. “You think he wrote that song about _himself_?”

“Who else? ‘My only angel’ indeed. Proper narcissist. I didn’t say it--he admits it!” 

“Fuck if you don’t manage to make me feel better, Louis. It was strange being in his house, seeing where he watches telly, drinking out of his glass. It’s been years and at least two houses ago.”

Louis nods and grinds out his cigarette with his heel before slipping it into the cellophane of his cigarette pack. He catches Zayn’s look. “You never lived with Gigi proper, did ya? She’d’ve had you picking up behind yourself too.”

“Are you happy, Lou?” He looks at Louis, hard, at the way the years show on his face but have made his expression seem more peaceful.

“Happy as I could be, given all what’s happened, yeah. El is a good girl, stood by me through everything. Life is about compromise, a fact that you, my friend,” and he slaps Zayn on his lower leg, “need to learn. C’mon then, let’s go in and drink ourselves stupid. It’s only 1 am. Plenty of time left in the night.”

When Zayn wakes up, he sees that he’s still on the sofa, the telly is still blaring football matches, and the ashtray is full of foul-smelling butts. One thing he doesn’t miss about smoking, and apparently Louis doesn’t always do what Eleanor says. No surprise there. He picks up his phone and sees he has two messages from Harry.

_pack up your gear and come back. stay with me this week_

_please. we should work it out just friends its stupid after five years_

He sees that the last message was at 4 am, while he and Lou were drinking beer and playing FIFA. He also sees that his phone is down to 8% battery and goes into the kitchen to find someone’s phone charging. He unplugs it and plugs in his own.

The house is quiet. Most likely Louis and Eleanor sleep in. Why wouldn’t they, living in the city like this? He’ll be glad as always to get back to his routines. He thinks that he’ll try to take a nap, see if he can’t get over his jet lag, and since he doesn’t know where Louis has put him he just falls back onto the sofa where he spent the night, ignoring the mess around him, including his own.

When Zayn wakes up again, it’s late enough that the light is slanting through the windows. He can hear Eleanor in the kitchen and wanders in. She’s wiping counters, and he hears the dishwasher humming. “Zayn! So glad to see you! I was chuffed when you and Louis made up. You were too close not to, and besides he hates Liam now, and Niall’s always too busy.” And then at Zayn’s look. “Well, he _does_. He won’t admit it, but who can understand Liam these days? He’s gone off, hasn’t he?” She looks good, still slim, still with the lustrous mane of brown hair, still graceful in her movements. Louis could have done much worse and had.

“Is his highness up yet?”

“The sun’s still out, Zayn. No, course not. If he doesn’t have something for work he’ll sleep round the clock sometimes. And I’ve got friends to meet for drinks. I’ve cleaned the kitchen so the cleaner can come tomorrow.” She rolls her eyes. 

“I’d feel bad, but everyone does this, cleaning for the cleaners. Women, anyway. You men don’t give two shits, do you?” Zayn notices that she’s wearing nice trousers and a sparkly top. 

“Alright then, give Lou a kiss for me, and you’ve got at least three new messages from Harry. What? It was _ buzzing _ , Zayn! It might have been _ important _.”

With that, Eleanor leaves, and the house is quiet again. Oli must be gone. Should he look at his phone? Can’t hurt. It’s boring here if all Louis is going to do is sleep.

_ZAYN CALL ME were not through talking i think _ 9 am

_Zayn are you even up yet it’s half past four in the afternoon _ yep 4:33 pm

_ok im going for drinks but ill be back around 7 the gate code is 918677 and the key is under the mat _ 5 pm

He thinks, well, he can go over there anyway, Harry won’t even be there, and he can decide once he’s there if he’ll stay. He thinks they do need to work it out. He thinks anyway Louis has the cleaners coming tomorrow, so he should be out of the way. He sends a quick text to Louis and then calls the Uber that will take him north to Hampstead Heath. He’ll take a shower there. Plenty of time before Harry gets back.

It isn’t odd, really. Harry is as good as his word, or at least the letter of it. He doesn’t touch Zayn again except to give him a chaste neck and shoulder massage while they, or rather Zayn, watches a football match (“Zayn, this is dead boring. I’m going to put in headphones, yeah?”) Harry makes them a late dinner, something with quinoa and veggies and a light lemon sauce that is actually quite good, and then they watch telly for a few hours. Harry says that if he liked _ Fleabag _ then he’ll like _ Killing Eve _, has he seen it—no? Then they’ll watch it right now, and they do, they stay up until 4 am watching the first two seasons, and Zayn gets more and more comfortable. 

Maybe they can just get used to each other again, just watch telly and argue about whether it’s the acting or the script that makes _ Killing Eve _ so good, and they can listen to _ Thirst Aid Kit _, the podcast Harry started because they had an eppy on hot priests. By then, four days in, Zayn feels comfortable enough to suggest half-seriously that he knew Harry was kinky but not in that way, and should Zayn go buy a clerical collar, but then Harry’s eyes go soft in that way he has, and Zayn says hastily, “Jesus, mate, I was only kidding.”

So Harry doesn’t touch Zayn, exactly, but he reaches around him in the kitchen when they’re making tea, and he brushes his hand when he passes him a glass to dry when they’re doing the washing up, and he goes around shirtless a lot.

On the fifth morning, Zayn gets a text from Louis, saying only, _ well? _

_well nothing_

_you disappoint me mate, two more days yeah_

_two more yeah_

_do what i told you it’s for your own good_

He thinks, _ maybe I will _ . He thinks, _ don’t think I won’t _.

They’ve watched an entire season of _ The Great British Bake-off _. As has already become their custom, they’re slouched on Harry’s comfortable sofa, feet on the coffee table, which now holds only two gin and tonics on “Harry Styles On Tour” coasters, the magazines having disappeared somewhere. It’s all merch, Zayn thinks, but it’s okay, it’s still Harry, it’s good.

“Ok, Harry, I feel like that’s giving the show a proper fighting chance to win my heart, but I just, it’s like Nero fiddling while Rome burns, innit? Like, it’s very soothing, I can see that, but I like something with more of an edge, something that gets how fucked up the world really is—.”

“Oh really, Malik?” Harry is laughing at him, and it feels pleasurable and infuriating in equal bits. “Because your life is so hard, being a rich gentleman farmer? You know why you feel this way?”

“Yeah! Because I pay attention, and I’m half Paki—“

Harry isn’t laughing any more; his face has gone serious as he looks into Zayn’s eyes. “I know those things are true, Z, but it’s more because you’re so soft yourself, you’re naturally so gentle. I have to look for softness. I’ve had to grow it back in myself after those first few years, but you—even when you’re trying to be mean it just comes off as hurt.”

Zayn hates Harry briefly, because who is he to say such things, to know such things? But then he gives in, it’s so natural to just give in to Harry, and he murmurs, “Maybe so, maybe so. D’ya think you really are all hard and cynical now, Haz? _ You _ were always so gentle. You’d say ‘excuse me’ to a chair if you hit it. Even when we would fight, you’d never say the really cruel things you could’ve. Have you changed so much?” He wants to know, because Louis was right, Harry eases up with familiarity, and he’s eased up with Zayn a lot. The awkward, endearing boy is still inside the man, and Zayn still has his feelings for that boy.

“I wish I could say no, I haven’t, but I’ve had to learn to look out for myself. I don’t trust people so much any more.” 

Harry’s voice is full of honey, so sweet that the words don’t bite, don’t register as they should. Instead, the sound of them makes Zayn melt a bit. It must be nostalgia, because Zayn says on impulse, “You can trust me, Hazza.”

“I trust you least of all, Zee. I’m sorry. I’ve loved having you here, and I want us to get past the bitterness we’ve had between us, but I know how you are, I know how quickly you can turn on me, because you’ve done it.”

“Then you’re not forgiving me? You haven’t forgiven me at all! How could you let me sleep in your guest house and feed me breakfast and dinner every day, and you don’t forgive me?”

“It’s not true, I’ve forgiven you the past, but going forward I’d have to learn to trust you again, and I don’t think you want to bother with me that much.”

“It’s fine to watch movies with me, and to argue with me over footie, or what the meaning is of _ Fleabag _, Season 2, or to help me cook a meal, but you don’t want anything else, anything more, Zayn.”

“What do you mean, Harry? What is more? What’s wrong with this?”

Harry looks away, shakes his head slightly. “Nothing, Zee. This is good, I like this. I’m glad we’re this and not what we were. Truly.”

Zayn feels it, that he’s missed an opportunity, but now that it’s passed he can’t call it back. He says only, “Let’s have another G and T, Harry. And then I’ll make enchiladas. Lilia taught me how.”

Harry looks up at him, still aglow in that way he’s never lost, and smiles a little sadly. “Yeah, Z, that’ll be perfect. A great way to spend our next-to-last night together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had hoped that this would be the last chapter, but it was getting long (for me) so I decided to post this much. Thanks for reading!


	13. Zayn in London II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Zayn has used every dish in the kitchen, so there’s a lot of washing up to do, and Harry is a little tipsy. He goes behind Zayn to put a pan away in the cupboard on the other side of the sink from where he’s drying, and for some reason this requires a full body press from behind, as though Harry’s kitchen isn’t huge, as though he’s squeezing by in the galley kitchen of the tour bus back in the day. Zayn notices him doing it, but he likes it, likes knowing Harry can’t help himself, because he’s tipsy but also because it’s Zayn._
> 
> Zayn finally spends enough time at Harry's that the inevitable happens.

  
The enchiladas are a rousing success. Zayn has memorized Lilia’s recipe, he loves them so, and he makes Harry take him to a Mexican grocery--Zayn! There’s a Mexican grocery in London! How do you even know this?--because they can get what Lilia uses, the queso blanco to go inside, queso cotija to crumble on top, and freshly made corn tortillas, and then he finds a way to chop some kale for on top, so Harry thinks it’s healthy enough. They stuff themselves and drink Negro Modelo until they’re both flushed and laughing at things that aren’t really funny.

Zayn has used every dish in the kitchen, so there’s a lot of washing up to do, and Harry is a little tipsy. He goes behind Zayn to put a pan away in the cupboard on the other side of the sink where he’s drying, and for some reason this requires a full body press from behind, as though Harry’s kitchen isn’t _ huge _, as though he’s squeezing by in the galley kitchen of the tour bus back in the day. Zayn notices him doing it, but he likes it, likes knowing Harry can’t help himself, because he’s tipsy but also because it’s Zayn.

Then they’re back in the sitting room on the sofa, and instead of watching telly, because they’ve moved on to mezcal margaritas, which Harry has learned to make from someone, and which are very much on theme, and then for the first time this week they gossip a little. Zayn wants to know why he never sees Harry with Grimmy any more, and Harry tells him that it’s not the same since Nick met Mesh, like he can’t stand how he feels like a third wheel. This seems ironic to Zayn, since Harry inserts himself into families all the time, and he says so, and then Harry gets the little furrow between his brows, the one that Zayn keeps wanting to kiss smooth, as he says seriously, “But it’s not the same, Zayn, because I knew him first!” 

And then Harry wants to know if Zayn ever suspected Gigi of hooking up with Kendall, but Zayn can’t tell him because secrets, but he starts to giggle, and then Harry starts to giggle too, and they are taking shots of mezcal and hitting each other on the arm because mezcal is a _ lot _. Somehow, during all of this, Harry has scooted over next to Zayn, and he puts his hand on Zayn’s knee every time he speaks. It’s getting quite erotic, so Zayn brings up the way Harry wears old man clothes so much in public, like “What’s with the grandpa trousers and baggy cardigans, Harry, and then you do a music video and you’re wearing lace dresses and having boys rub up against your bum?”

Harry grins at him. “You watched it? How many times, Zee? Truth. How many times? Did you notice that male model looked a lot like you? I insisted on it. The next video too. I wanted the same model, and I got him.” Zayn doesn’t want to parse that sentence too closely, but by now Harry is slurring, and Zayn is too. They’re going to be so hung over in the morning. Zayn thinks, _ we better drink water _, so he goes into the kitchen and fills two big glasses from the tap, thinking that he knows where everything is now in Harry’s kitchen, and that’s proper nice, isn’t it.

They haven’t gossipped yet about the other boys, so they both agree that Niall looks so grown up, how our little boy has become a man, and by now Harry has his arm looped around Zayn’s shoulders, and Zayn is leaning into him, feeling nostalgic and maybe a bit aroused.

“God, Harry, remember how they dressed Louis at first in the band. He had such a sweet little bum, didn’t he? We weren’t so bold back in those days, but I always wanted to squeeze it, just to see if it’d be soft as it looked or kind of muscular?”

Harry snorts at that. “Does Louis know you had improper thoughts about him?”

They laugh again, a little too loudly, because Louis really was hot. “When did he start wearing track suits all the time, Zayn? Harry wonders. “It’s like he stopped wanting to look hot.”

“I think he got tired of all the Larry rumors, babe. He just looked for the most laddy clothes he could find, the stuff that screamed I’M STRAIGHT.” They sit for a minute, thinking about Louis and what might have been and what had been. Harry strokes Zayn’s arm absently, which might be why Zayn says without thinking, “Louis says that I should shag you on my last night here.”

Harry’s eyes widen as he replies, “Did he? Well. I never said Lou had poor judgement, just poor taste.”

They smile at each other, but then the smile turns into something else, and Harry says, “So, are you going to do it, shag me, I mean?

Zayn answers, "Do you want me to?” thinking he full well knows that Harry does, knows that he’s there for the taking, that he’s always been easy for Zayn, just like Zayn’s always been easy for him.

Harry takes his other hand, with its enticingly long, delicate fingers, and turns Zayn’s chin toward him. He gives him a look that implores and demands at the same time and says, “Please, babe, I might die if you don’t, since I’ve been waiting all week. You wouldn’t want to be responsible for a murder, would you?”

And Zayn says, “No, of course not, that would never do, murdering Harry Styles, think of all the hearts I’d be breaking.”

And Harry says, “Then we’d best be getting on with it, hadn’t we?”

Zayn’s fully hard now, but he still wants to tease Harry a little, so he says, “But it’s not my last night,” and Harry says, “True, but what if it’s as good as we remember, and then we’ve wasted time,” and Zayn says, “Aha! As good as we remember?” But then he can’t joke about it, not with Harry’s half-lidded look, not with his dick hard in his trackies, thinking of putting his hands on Harry’s skin again, not when what he wants is so close. 

So he leans in, to their shared mezcal-flavored breath, and he presses his lips to Harry’s, and then he licks a slow line across Harry’s underlip, the fullness of it a promise under his tongue. Harry’s mouth opens to him, and they kiss like drowning men after oxygen, like starving men at a meal, like their lives depend on it.

Zayn comes awake slowly, but instead of the light-blocking shades of the pool house he’s in Harry’s super king bed, and they’re curled around each other, Harry the little spoon as he prefers. Zayn’s dick is hard, and he’s just thinking of doing something with it, just starting to rub against Harry’s crack, to imagine that they’ll be calm enough this morning to have proper sex instead of just thrashing around and moaning at each other until they come from friction alone, and then when they tried to be calmer they barely managed hand jobs. 

Finally, they had laughed at themselves, at how horny they were, how much like young lads again, and it felt perfect to be at ease like this. They fell asleep on their backs, holding hands, Zayn remembers, but during the night they’ve managed to wrap themselves up into this HarryZayn cocoon, and Zayn feels fond, very fond indeed. He pushes a little against Harry, letting him feel that he’s ready to go again, if Harry is, and Harry makes little noises like, _ oh, you’re waking me up_, and _ oh, yes, let’s do the thing we couldn’t manage last night_, when they both start at hearing the doorbell ring. “Fuck,” Harry mutters, and then he finds his trackies from where Zayn had stripped them off on him, pulls them on, and heads downstairs.

Zayn luxuriates a bit in the knowledge that Harry will be back, that whoever it is, delivery, probably, since they knew the gate code, will leave, and he strokes himself lightly, just because he can, because Harry will be back soon, and he’s going to fuck him senseless. He’s decided.

He looks around the room, since he barely noticed anything about it last night.Zayn is surprised that in such a tasteful house, Harry’s room is like his nan’s, full of photos and memorabilia. He has pictures of all of them on his walls, getting awards, smiling on location for music videos, on stage, and he has sales certificates for all five albums, and his own awards, his own pictures, in the blue Gucci suit inducting Stevie Nicks into the Hall of Fame, the professional shots from all the Gucci campaigns, the platinum certificates for his two records, the Grammy for Song of the Year. He has a picture of him and Zayn, too, arms wrapped around each other, grinning at the camera. Zayn had no idea Harry was so nostalgic. He’s way worse than Zayn. 

He’s thinking about how nice it is that Harry can surprise him when he becomes slowly aware of voices from downstairs. He slips on his own trackies, opens the bedroom door quietly, and slips down the hall toward the stairs. He hears Harry’s low, slow cadences and the quicker ones of a voice he knows quite well. Ben. Ben Winston is downstairs. 

He and Harry are arguing, it seems, although it’s always hard to tell with Harry. He sounds aggrieved though, and Ben’s voice is insistent on something. Zayn doesn’t want to know what they’re saying.

For a minute, he thinks, _ I’ll wait until they go into the kitchen or into the sitting room, and then I’ll sneak out, go to the pool house and pack up my shit. How can Ben be here, why does he know the gate code, how after everything that happened can Harry be arguing with him _, but then he remembers that he’s seen them in photos, that Harry has always had the relationship with Ben, that he doesn’t know, hasn’t asked, what the nature of it even is. Harry always maintains his business relationships as friendships. It was one of the things they argued about.

He decides, _ well, I’ve come all this way, I’ve come over here, we haven’t shagged, exactly, but we’ve been sexual, and it was good, too good to give up without a fight, _ so he makes his way to the end of the hall and down the hardwood stairs, not trying to be quiet, trying instead to make noise. He even coughs, just to say to Harry, _ I’m coming, if you’re doing anything you don’t want me to see, then stop _.

When he gets to the landing of the stairs, he sees that Ben has his hand at Harry’s waist, and the gesture shouts familiarity and possession. Zayn has never loathed another person this much in his life, not Shahid when he dropped “I Won’t Mind,” not Sarah when she told him by text she wouldn’t be managing him any more, and certainly not Gigi, when she left him, saying, “Zayn, I can’t anymore. You don’t love me; you love how useful I am.” It still stings, that memory, but nothing like the sound of the headboard slamming into the wall that night in Bangkok and Harry’s voice moaning, “Ben, Ben, oh my god, fuck me, _ harder _, Ben.” 

Zayn thinks, _ I can still leave. I can brush past them, and then I’ll go to the pool house and pack my shit, and then I’ll head down the side of the house to the lane, and then I’ll walk away, and I’ll never come back. This is over _.

But while his mind is racing with these thoughts, while his heart thumps out an arrhythmia in his chest that might be alarming, while his throat tightens and his muscles constrict, his eyes keep paying attention. Harry isn’t comfortable; he pulls away from Ben when he tries to pull him closer, head extended for all the world like one of Zayn’s chickens, reaching for feed. Harry takes his hands off Ben’s shoulders and pushes him just a little, barely enough to notice, but it’s something, isn’t it. It’s something.

Ben looks up then, sees Zayn, and his eyes narrow. Harry cranes his neck around to him and grins. “Zayn! See, Ben, Zayn is staying with me. I thought he was still sleeping, but here he is!” His eyes are hopeful and wild.

Ben’s eyes try to will him away. Instead, Zayn saunters over to Ben, bare-chested and sleep-mussed, and holds out a hand. “Morning, babe. Ben, haven’t seen you in ages. I’d say it was good to see you, but we both know that’s not true. Harry, you’re not going anywhere, are you?” He stands close on Harry’s left and nuzzles at his shoulder as Ben takes two steps backwards.

“What’s brought you to London, Zayn? Business?” Ben says, his tone condescending.

“Just Harry, Ben. We’ve been keeping it quiet, Harry and me. We needed the time to work things out.” Zayn feels Harry stifle a snort by coughing. “Did you need Harry for something important?”

“No,” Ben mutters darkly. “I’ll talk to him soon. When are you leaving, Zayn?”

“Well….” and now Zayn snakes a hand around Harry’s waist, because he’s enjoying this, “we’re not sure, are we, Haz?”

“No, we’re not sure, but I’ll call you, Ben,” Harry says firmly, as he turns into Zayn for a brief moment, pressing his chest against Zayn’s arm, giving him a quick, grateful glance, and then he walks Ben toward and through the door, nodding as Ben whispers something low and angry. A few minutes later, he’s back inside, looking at Zayn with wide eyes.

“I had no idea you had that in you! You just told Ben to get out!”

“I did nothing of the sort, Harry! He wanted to go. I could see it in his eyes.” He looks up at Harry, feeling the mischief and the boldness of it, the way he has acted out of character and how much he loves it. They burst out laughing, hard enough that they have to hold each other up, and then they are hugging each other, tightly. 

Zayn doesn’t remember the last time he and Harry were this joyful together. Part of him wants to know what Ben wanted, why he had his hand on Harry in that possessive way, but then he thinks _ I can be happy or I can be right _, and he chooses to be happy, one more time.

Harry pulls back, though, and he tells him what Zayn hasn’t asked.

He sighs first. “About that. It’s complicated. It’s not sexual, really, anymore, mostly, but he acts like it still is. He likes playing daddy, and you know how I am. Sometimes I still get drunk when he’s around, and I can lose myself for a bit.”

“So,” Zayn starts, trying to keep his voice even, “you still, like, get with him from time to time?”

“Not since before I came to the farm, Zayn. Please don’t get mad about this. You said you just wanted to be friends again, and until last night I’ve been trying. Even though I wanted to touch you every minute.”

“I was so jealous of you, Harry,” Zayn says softly. “Like, everyone who touched you I wanted to kill jealous. I never knew why you couldn’t understand about Perrie, why you had to hurt me the way you did. Not just with Ben, with lots of people. I stopped wanting to touch you because I thought I could smell everyone who’d been there before me.”

“I know. I knew. I wanted you to be jealous, sometimes.” Harry levels Zayn with the green gaze that has upended his good sense for almost a decade. “It was performing, sometimes, just for you. I thought that if you could see that you were jealous you could see that you cared about me.”

“Ah, what the fuck, Harry, that’s so fucked up! What was wrong with us?”

“I don’t know,” Harry whispers, “but it was fucked up. It was. We’re different now, maybe. Let’s go back to bed, babe.” 

Zayn follows Harry upstairs, back to the bedroom, so that they can finish what Zayn had started, and so that he can see Harry naked and glistening with sweat, riding him while he jacks him off, so that he can watch Harry come and come himself from the way everything tightens as Harry orgasms above him, his beautiful torso shining, just like in the videos.

They shower together, and then Harry is stroking him, hand slick with shower gel, and then his mouth takes Zayn in all the way, and it should take longer than it does, but it’s impossible, this long drought ending in just this way, with Harry, and he comes down Harry’s throat as the water beats on his shoulders and the light from the bottled glass window high above them falls just right onto Harry’s wet hair, giving him the look of an angel. His only angel. _ His _.

From a distance, he thinks he hears his own voice crying out, Harry, Harry, babe, I love you so much, I love you.

He must have said it, because Harry looks up at him as he swallows his come, the way he always did, every drop, like it was delicious, and Harry says it too. “I love you, Zayn. I’ve always loved you, I think. It’s hurt so much to be apart from you.”

Zayn thinks that he will always make this choice now, to be happy over being right, but of course it isn’t true.

  
  
  
  
  
  


  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one more hurdle for these two idiots. Thanks for reading--this has turned out to the be the slowest burn ever, but finally at least they stop acting like they can be friends.
> 
> Usual disclaimers. We are fully in AU territory here.

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing will happen with Baby Connor, thus no warnings. He's a baby with a crush, is all. Who wouldn't have a crush on Farmer Zayn? This Zayn has muscles from all that hard farm work, and he's filled out and healthy looking. He smiles regularly. It's the Zayn we all want and that he deserves to be.
> 
> The usual disclaimers. I imagine this fic series appealing to a tiny, tiny minority in the 1D fandom, but if you're here, welcome and thanks for reading!


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